Waiting for PostgreSQL 11 – Add \gdesc psql command.

On 5th of September 2017, Tom Lane committed patch:

Add \gdesc psql command.
 
This command acts somewhat like \g, but instead of executing the query
buffer, it merely prints a description of the columns that the query
result would have.  (Of course, this still requires parsing the query;
if parse analysis fails, you get an error anyway.)  We accomplish this
using an unnamed prepared statement, which should be invisible to psql
users.
 
Pavel Stehule, reviewed by Fabien Coelho
 
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAFj8pRBhYVvO34FU=EKb=nAF5t3b++krKt1FneCmR0kuF5m-QA@mail.gmail.com

This is actually pretty interesting thing. Let's assume we have a very complex, and rather slow query, for example:

SELECT *, pg_sleep(1) FROM pg_database;

In my case, with 8 databases, it would take 8 seconds to run. And if all I need is to check what columns are really returned, or what datatypes they use, I can:

=$ \timing
Timing IS ON.
 
=$ SELECT *, pg_sleep(1) FROM pg_database \gdesc
    COLUMN     |   TYPE    
---------------+-----------
 datname       | name
 datdba        | oid
 encoding      | INTEGER
 datcollate    | name
 datctype      | name
 datistemplate | BOOLEAN
 datallowconn  | BOOLEAN
 datconnlimit  | INTEGER
 datlastsysoid | oid
 datfrozenxid  | xid
 datminmxid    | xid
 dattablespace | oid
 datacl        | aclitem[]
 pg_sleep      | void
(14 ROWS)
 
TIME: 2.540 ms

And get results immediately (well, in 2.5ms in this case).

I, for one, know that I will be using this a lot, once Pg11 will be released. Thanks guys.