til/postgres/write-a-query-result-to-file.md

Write A Query Result To File

Generally when writing a query in psql a statement will be terminated with a semicolon. An alternative approach is to end it with a \g instead. This will also send the query to the Postgres server for execution.

select 1 \g

If a filename is included after the \g, then the result of the query will be written to that file instead of output to the psql session.

> select 1, 2, 3 \g query_result.txt

If we cat that file, we can see the query result.

Time: 4.293 ms
> \! cat query_result.txt
 ?column? | ?column? | ?column?
----------+----------+----------
        1 |        2 |        3
(1 row)

See man psql for more details.