Re: Two novice questions

Wm.A.Stafford wrote:
> I have received a collection of scripts to be used to build a PostgreSQL
> db and I can't figure out the following.
>
> 1. Usage of quotes in the scripts.
> The following comes from a script to build and populate a table:
> gid serial PRIMARY KEY,
> "fid_" int4,
> Why is the second column name in quotes, i.e. what is the difference
> between fid_ int4 and "fid_" int 4.

The use of quotes preserves the case and also allows identifier names to
be keywords and to also contain spaces. What triggers identifiers to be
quoted will depend on the program used to create the script. My guess
here is that it only searches for lowercase alpha and numeric contents
in identifiers and quotes otherwise, meaning the underscore may have
triggered the quoting.

> In a similar vein, this comes from a script that creates a couple of
> tables:
> create table schema1."cache" ( ...
> create table schema1.cache2 ( ...
> Here one schema name is quoted and the other is not.

As above - cache is listed as a non-reserved keyword. cache2 is not.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/sql-keywords-appendix.html

> 2. How does one run a script from PGAdmin? I have been 'opening' the
> script file then hitting the run button. Is there a way to just specify
> the path to the script?

I don't believe there is in pgadmin. If you use psql (the cli client for
postgresql) then you can run the script with \i or as an option when
starting psql.

--

Shane Ambler
pgSQL (at) Sheeky (dot) Biz

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