Re: pg_dump return status..

On Thu, 04 Jan 2001 05:12:25 Anand Raman wrote:
>I am trying to create a shell script which dumps my db to a flat file ..
>
>To dump the database i use the pg_dump command..
>
>I find that irrespective of the fact whether pg_dump managed to connect
>to the db or not the return status ($?) is always zero.. This throws the
>shell script in a spin which continues even when pg_dump is not able to
>connect ..
>
>Is there anyway around this. I thought of one way was to check stderr
>for the occurence of the word "failed" and then exit..

You could have the script check for the existence of the dump file and that
it has a non-zero size. To dump my personal database, I could use this:

#!/bin/bash
dumpfile=$HOME/mydatabase.dump
pg_dump -d $LOGNAME > $dumpfile
if [ -s $dumpfile ] ; then
  echo 'Dump succeeded'
else
  echo 'Dump failed'
fi

This should work in sh also.

Tony
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