Hi,
I saw a user wanted to restrict the rows copied by COPY TO using a WHERE
clause, but ran into an error.
As you know, COPY FROM supports WHERE, but COPY TO does not:
=# copy t1 to stdout where i > 5;
ERROR: WHERE clause not allowed with COPY TO
LINE 1: copy t1 to stdout where i > 5;
^
In such cases, we can do with specifying a query as the target of COPY:
=# copy (select i from t1 where i > 5) to stdout;
However, as shown in the first example, no hint is provided in the error
message.
For views or others, COPY TO already provides a helpful hint message:
=# copy v1 to stdout;
ERROR: cannot copy from view "v1"
HINT: Try the COPY (SELECT ...) TO variant.
Considering what the user was trying to do, it might be helpful to
provide a similar hint in this case as well.
I’ve attached a patch that adds such a hint.
What do you think?
--
Regards,
--
Atsushi Torikoshi
Seconded from NTT DATA Japan Corporation to SRA OSS K.K.
