Possible TODO item: copy to/from pipe

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgreSQL(dot)org
Subject: Possible TODO item: copy to/from pipe
Date: 2006-05-31 15:03:14
Message-ID: 12436.1149087794@sss.pgh.pa.us
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After re-reading what I just wrote to Andreas about how compression of
COPY data would be better done outside the backend than inside, it
struck me that we are missing a feature that's fairly common in Unix
programs. Perhaps COPY ought to have the ability to pipe its output
to a shell command, or read input from a shell command. Maybe something
like

COPY mytable TO '| gzip >/home/tgl/mytable.dump.gz';

(I'm not wedded to the above syntax, it's just an off-the-cuff thought.)

Of course psql would need the same capability, since the server-side
copy would still be restricted to superusers.

You can accomplish COPY piping now through psql, but it's a bit awkward:

psql -c "COPY mytable TO stdout" mydb | gzip ...

Thoughts? Is this worth doing, or is the psql -c approach good enough?

regards, tom lane

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