Re: PSQLRC environment variable.

Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > > Tom Lane wrote:
> > >> Uh, why is that a good idea?
> >
> > > Well, suppose you want all your users to use the same psqlrc file.
> > > Instead of creating symlinks for every user, you can just set PSQLRC in
> > > /etc/profile and everyone gets it.
> >
> > ... but people who want to make their own .psqlrc can't?  At least not
> > till it occurs to them to unset PSQLRC?  I don't really see the use-case
> > here.  James' stated problem of setting a default search_path could be
>
> If they want their own, the just unset PSQLRC in their .profile.
>
> > handled at least as effectively through either PGOPTIONS or server-side
> > GUC settings (postgresql.conf, or per-user or per-database variable
> > settings).
> >
> > I'm not averse to inventing PSQLRC if there's actually some case it
> > solves better than any of our existing mechanisms.  But so far it seems
> > like a solution desperately in search of a problem.
>
> I think most/all applications that look for a file in the user directory
> have either a global place they look too, or a way to control where to
> look for it.  This seems pretty Unix standard, I think we should follow
> that.

What if we allow the environment variable to specify a global file to
read in addition to the home directory .psqlrc file?  That seems even
more useful.

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