Fwd: psql in bash scrpts, is possible ?

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From: - Mon May 31 22:53:06 2010
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Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 22:52:56 +0200
From: Mariateresa L <mariateresa(dot)ll(at)bresciaonline(dot)it>
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Subject: [NOVICE] psql in bash scrpts, is possible ?
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Hello everyone,

I'm building a small newspaper informations aggregator around postgresql
8.3 and Ubuntu 9.10.
Starting from a previous experience on Oracle DB, I've built and tested
a bunch of functions, triggers, SQL scripts etc... that work flawlessly
(almost !) when I submit them by hand in psql; now I want to pack
everything in a nice shell script, with proper error control, automated
file shuffling, predefined queries in text files and so on, but I
cannot convince psql that the SQL commands (select, insert or copy...)
it has to handle come from a file.
I can submit ("\i filename" or "psql --file filename") files that
contains commands, eg starting with "\" but psql does not understand the
same sintax if tne file contains a simple "SELECT * FROM tablex".

Am I uber-newbie or is this a known limitation of psql ? And, in this
case, there is something to overcome this limit and afford my non-techie
user to launch a simple command to print her data or to bulk update tables ?

P.S. Initially I discarded the use of procedural languages (C or ...)
for a quick and simpler solution !

Thanks in advance

Fabio, from North Italy