Re: csv format for psql

On Apr 6, 2018, at 1:38 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com> wrote:

2018-04-06 5:46 GMT+02:00 Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz@postgresql.org>:

> On Apr 5, 2018, at 11:08 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/1/18 03:27, Pavel Stehule wrote:
>> I don't share option so CSV format should be exactly same like CSV COPY.
>> COPY is designed for backups - and header is not too important there.
>> When I seen some csv, then there usually header was used.
>
> I think in practice a lot of people use COPY also because it's a nice
> way to get CSV output, even if it's not for backups.  The options that
> COPY has for CSV are clearly designed around making the output
> compatible with various CSV-variants.

+1

From a user standpoint this was mostly how I use COPY.  Someone
requests a report that they can manipulate in $SPREADSHEET.  I write
a query, place it inside a “COPY” statement with FORMAT CSV,
HEADER TRUE, save to file, and deliver.

> Another thought: Isn't CSV just the same as unaligned output plus some
> quoting?  Could we add a quote character setting and then define --csv
> to be quote-character = " and fieldsep = , ?

This makes a lot of sense. I’ve also generated CSV files using a
combination of:

        \f ,
        \a
        \o file.csv

and then running the query, but if any of the fields contained a “,” if would
inevitably break in $SPREADSHEET.

unfortunately, most used CSV separator in Czech Repuplic is ; due MS Excel settings for CR