On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johns...@gmail.com> writes: > > On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Tom Lane <t...@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > >> One interesting point, if you wish to consider history as being > >> connection-specific, is what happens during a \c command. Right > >> now the answer is "nothing" but you might wish it were different. > > > Just to clarify/confirm a point inferred from the docs... > > If you place "\set HISTFILE ~/.psql_history- :DBNAME" > > into your .psqlrc file then when you perform a "\c" the .psqlrc file is > > re-read and the new value for DBNAME is used to generate a new history > > file name. > > Um, no, I see no indication of that in the code. Where did you read that > in the docs? > > DBNAME The name of the database you are currently connected to. This is set every time you connect to a database (including program start-up), but can be unset. HISTFILE The file name that will be used to store the history list. The default value is ~/.psql_history. For example, putting: \set HISTFILE ~/.psql_history- :DBNAME in ~/.psqlrc will cause psql to maintain a separate history for each database. The "including program start-up" aspect to DBNAME means that it is changed upon using "\c" I inferred the part about .psqlrc being re-read and thus taking on the new value of :DBNAME in the example. psqlrc is later defined to be "the [system|user] startup file" so it was wrong to conclude that it was re-read upon issuing "\c" - though "connection startup" isn't a totally unreasonable interpretation of the timing at which this file is read. Not everyone is going to associate the "rc" suffix with the file only being read during program startup. > If we wanted the history file to change at \c, I think the best way would > be to invent some escape-patterns that could be placed in the value of > HISTFILE, say along the lines of "\set HISTFILE ~/.psql_history-%h-%p", > and then specify that if the value contains any such patterns we'll dump > and reload the history file when reconnecting. But TBH I don't think > it's worth the trouble. I'd sure like to have seen multiple requests > for such functionality before we go to the trouble. > A slightly less invasive approach would be to have a "connection startup script" file..."psql-conn-rc"...that is re-read immediately after a successful connection is made to a database. David J.
