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From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Message-Id: <200612060429.kB64Tfa16970@momjian.us>
Subject: Re: psql man page error?
In-Reply-To: <1165361142.3839.281.camel@silverbirch.site>
To: Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 23:29:41 -0500 (EST)
CC: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
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Simon Riggs wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 18:16 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > Tom Lane wrote:
> > > Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:
> > > > I think the proper fix is:
> > > 
> > > >       <application>psql</application>, like this: <literal>echo -e
> > > >       "\\x\nSELECT * FROM foo;" | psql</literal>.
> > > 
> > > > I think all modern operating systems understand echo -e at this point.
> > > 
> > > No, they don't, and neither does the Single Unix Spec:
> > > http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/xcu/echo.html
> > > 
> > > So your version of the example depends on non-standards-compliant
> > > echo behavior, which is not better than before.
> > 
> > Well, at least my example works on _some_ operating systems, while the
> > previous worked on none of them, so it is _better_.
> > 
> > I can't think of a good way to do this except converting the example to
> > a <programlisting> block that will not change newlines:
> > 
> > 	echo '\x
> > 	SELECT * FROM foo;' | psql
> > 
> > Is that what people want?
> 
> Well, it works, but IMHO its not as clear.

Well, it is even worse because some versions of echo automatically
interpret backslashes, so it would have to be \\x.  I am thinking we
should just leave it as I have it now, unless we want to use 'awk' or
'perl' where we know the backslash behavior.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian   bruce@momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +