Re: Setting the Field Separator in PSQL

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 2:48 PM, David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Osborn, Marty <marty.osborn@rsa.com> wrote:

I need to change the field separator to a tab in an input SQL file.

 

I’ve tried every combination of tab, ‘\t’, “\t”, --field-separator=’\t’, etc, etc.

 

Should it be in the command line or in the SQL file?

Any help?

​More context would helpful but keep in mind that within SQL the expression:

'\t'  is a literal back-slash and a literal "t"

E'\t' is escaped to mean <tab>​

Dealing with the shell complicates the issue so if you can avoid it I suggest that do avoid it.

​I should probably have tried my own advice first, and I still haven't, but the documentation states:

"​"""

fieldsep

Specifies the field separator to be used in unaligned output format. That way one can create, for example, tab- or comma-separated output, which other programs might prefer. To set a tab as field separator, type \pset fieldsep '\t'. The default field separator is '|' (a vertical bar).

​"""​

​So I'm not sure if this report is user-error or documentation error.  A self-contained test case would help...

David J.​