Thread: Maintaining blank lines in psql output?

White space can of course make things easy to read, but psql seems to ignore 
those blank lines.  Is there any way to retain them in psql output?

$ cat spaces.sql
insert into foo values(1);
insert into foo values(2);
insert into foo values(3);
insert into foo values(4);


insert into bar values(1);
insert into bar values(2);
insert into bar values(3);
insert into bar values(4);


insert into snaggle values(1);
insert into snaggle values(2);
insert into snaggle values(3);
insert into snaggle values(4);


insert into frob values(1);
insert into frob values(2);
insert into frob values(3);
insert into frob values(4);


postgres@haggis:~$ psql12 test -af spaces.sql
insert into foo values(1);
INSERT 0 1
insert into foo values(2);
INSERT 0 1
insert into foo values(3);
INSERT 0 1
insert into foo values(4);
INSERT 0 1
insert into bar values(1);
INSERT 0 1
insert into bar values(2);
INSERT 0 1
insert into bar values(3);
INSERT 0 1
insert into bar values(4);
INSERT 0 1
insert into snaggle values(1);
INSERT 0 1
insert into snaggle values(2);
INSERT 0 1
insert into snaggle values(3);
INSERT 0 1
insert into snaggle values(4);
INSERT 0 1
insert into frob values(1);
INSERT 0 1
insert into frob values(2);
INSERT 0 1
insert into frob values(3);
INSERT 0 1
insert into frob values(4);
INSERT 0 1


-- 
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 02:22:22PM -0700, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:48 PM Ron <ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > White space can of course make things easy to read, but psql seems to
> > ignore
> > those blank lines.  Is there any way to retain them in psql output?
> >
> >
> Nope, there is no setting for psql to print all blank lines it encounters
> to stdout.  If you want to format your output with stuff other than query
> results it provides \echo
> 
> David J.

Perhaps the best you can do is something like adding:

  select '';

or

  raise notice '';

It won't result in just a blank line, but it will separate things.

cheers,
raf

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 04:10:50PM -0700, "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 4:07 PM raf <raf@raf.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 02:22:22PM -0700, "David G. Johnston" <
> > david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:48 PM Ron <ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > White space can of course make things easy to read, but psql seems to
> > > > ignore
> > > > those blank lines.  Is there any way to retain them in psql output?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Nope, there is no setting for psql to print all blank lines it encounters
> > > to stdout.  If you want to format your output with stuff other than query
> > > results it provides \echo
> > >
> > > David J.
> >
> > Perhaps the best you can do is something like adding:
> >
> >   select '';
> >
> > or
> >
> >   raise notice '';
> >
> > It won't result in just a blank line, but it will separate things.
> >
> >
> Those both seem much more complicated than \echo for the same (or worse)
> effect.  You'd have to wrap the raise notice inside a do block which itself
> would then be executed by the server...
> 
> David J.

Good point. I didn't read it right. select/raise make more sense
out of the context of psql (i.e. in sql/plpgsql). \echo makes more
sense in psql.

cheers,
raf

On 1/17/23 15:22, David G. Johnston wrote:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:48 PM Ron <ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com> wrote:

White space can of course make things easy to read, but psql seems to ignore
those blank lines.  Is there any way to retain them in psql output?

Nope, there is no setting for psql to print all blank lines it encounters to stdout.  If you want to format your output with stuff other than query results it provides \echo

\echo is exactly what I want, not only because of it's simplicity but since it doesn't generate numbers when \timing is enabled.

(The primary use is for sql scripts generated by bash scripts and run from cron, where stdout and stderr are redirected to a log file.)