LKBEN11158: Howto use \i command in psql for postgres running on windows?
LKB | Created: 02/04/2020 | Version: 0 | Language: EN | Rating: 0 | Outdated: False | Marked for deletion: False
Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG
Symptom
You want to use \i to read a file and execute all the commands in it but you get an invalid argument error
Cause
none
Solution
Windows and linux use a different syntax for file locations. The backslash is the main problem. To execute a script, you should double all your backslashes, this can be used to run scripts from an UNC path to.
e.g.
postgres=# \i y:\server\script.sql
y:: Invalid argument
If you use the following
postgres=# \i 'y:\\server\\script.sql'
Your script will, if the syntax is correct, work.
About the Author
Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.