diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml index 49ad740a4c3..803fc503a64 100644 --- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml +++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/psql-ref.sgml @@ -88,8 +88,8 @@ PostgreSQL documentation or a single backslash command. Thus you cannot mix SQL and psql meta-commands with this option. To achieve that, you could - pipe the string into psql, like - this: echo '\x \\ SELECT * FROM foo;' | psql. + pipe the string into psql, for example: + echo '\x \\ SELECT * FROM foo;' | psql. (\\ is the separator meta-command.) @@ -98,7 +98,21 @@ PostgreSQL documentation BEGIN/COMMIT commands included in the string to divide it into multiple transactions. This is different from the behavior when the same string is fed to - psql's standard input. + psql's standard input. Also, only + the result of the last SQL command is returned. + + + Because of these legacy behaviors, putting more than one command in + the string often has unexpected results. It's + better to feed multiple commands to psql's + standard input, either using echo as + illustrated above, or via a shell here-document, for example: + +psql <<EOF +\x +SELECT * FROM foo; +EOF +