Ken Tanzer <ken(dot)tanzer(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> You will for example be making it awfully difficult for them to use
>> \copy, \i, \e, \g, the list goes on.
> I'm not really eager to go down this path, but nonetheless it's not
> obvious to me why giving psql a lobotomy (or hopefully a careful
> surgical tweak) to disable the "\!" functionality would impact all those
> other functions.
No, you missed the point: those functions, as well as others, are
useless unless psql is running inside a filesystem that the user has
(easy) read/write access to. psql is really, really meant to be run
on the client side.
regards, tom lane