Month: October 2025

Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add psql PROMPT variable for search_path.

On 28th of October 2025, Nathan Bossart committed patch:

Add psql PROMPT variable for search_path.
 
The new %S substitution shows the current value of search_path.
Note that this only works when connected to Postgres v18 or newer,
since search_path was first marked as GUC_REPORT in commit
28a1121fd9.  On older versions that don't report search_path, %S is
replaced with a question mark.
 
Suggested-by: Lauri Siltanen <lauri.siltanen@gmail.com>
Author: Florents Tselai <florents.tselai@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Reviewed-by: Jim Jones <jim.jones@uni-muenster.de>
Reviewed-by: Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CANsM767JhTKCRagTaq5Lz52fVwLPVkhSpyD1C%2BOrridGv0SO0A%40mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add psql PROMPT variable for search_path.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Support COPY TO for partitioned tables.

On 20th of October 2025, Masahiko Sawada committed patch:

Support COPY TO for partitioned tables.
 
Previously, COPY TO command didn't support directly specifying
partitioned tables so users had to use COPY (SELECT ...) TO variant.
 
This commit adds direct COPY TO support for partitioned
tables, improving both usability and performance. Performance tests
show it's faster than the COPY (SELECT ...) TO variant as it avoids
the overheads of query processing and sending results to the COPY TO
command.
 
When used with partitioned tables, COPY TO copies the same rows as
SELECT * FROM table. Row-level security policies of the partitioned
table are applied in the same way as when executing COPY TO on a plain
table.
 
Author: jian he <jian.universality@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Melih Mutlu <m.melihmutlu@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Kirill Reshke <reshkekirill@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Atsushi Torikoshi <torikoshia@oss.nttdata.com>
Reviewed-by: Álvaro Herrera <alvherre@kurilemu.de>
Reviewed-by: Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CACJufxEZt%2BG19Ors3bQUq-42-61__C%3Dy5k2wk%3DsHEFRusu7%3DiQ%40mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Support COPY TO for partitioned tables.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add IGNORE NULLS/RESPECT NULLS option to Window functions.

On 3rd of October 2025, Tatsuo Ishii committed patch:

Add IGNORE NULLS/RESPECT NULLS option to Window functions.
 
Add IGNORE NULLS/RESPECT NULLS option (null treatment clause) to lead,
lag, first_value, last_value and nth_value window functions.  If
unspecified, the default is RESPECT NULLS which includes NULL values
in any result calculation. IGNORE NULLS ignores NULL values.
 
Built-in window functions are modified to call new API
WinCheckAndInitializeNullTreatment() to indicate whether they accept
IGNORE NULLS/RESPECT NULLS option or not (the API can be called by
user defined window functions as well).  If WinGetFuncArgInPartition's
allowNullTreatment argument is true and IGNORE NULLS option is given,
WinGetFuncArgInPartition() or WinGetFuncArgInFrame() will return
evaluated function's argument expression on specified non NULL row (if
it exists) in the partition or the frame.
 
When IGNORE NULLS option is given, window functions need to visit and
evaluate same rows over and over again to look for non null rows. To
mitigate the issue, 2-bit not null information array is created while
executing window functions to remember whether the row has been
already evaluated to NULL or NOT NULL. If already evaluated, we could
skip the evaluation work, thus we could get better performance.
 
Author: Oliver Ford <ojford@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@postgresql.org>
Reviewed-by: Krasiyan Andreev <krasiyan@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Reviewed-by: David Fetter <david@fetter.org>
Reviewed-by: Vik Fearing <vik@postgresfriends.org>
Reviewed-by: "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Chao Li <lic@highgo.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/flat/CAGMVOdsbtRwE_4+v8zjH1d9xfovDeQAGLkP_B6k69_VoFEgX-A@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add IGNORE NULLS/RESPECT NULLS option to Window functions.

Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add GROUP BY ALL.

On 29th of September 2025, Tom Lane committed patch:

Add GROUP BY ALL.
 
GROUP BY ALL is a form of GROUP BY that adds any TargetExpr that does
not contain an aggregate or window function into the groupClause of
the query, making it exactly equivalent to specifying those same
expressions in an explicit GROUP BY list.
 
This feature is useful for certain kinds of data exploration.  It's
already present in some other DBMSes, and the SQL committee recently
accepted it into the standard, so we can be reasonably confident in
the syntax being stable.  We do have to invent part of the semantics,
as the standard doesn't allow for expressions in GROUP BY, so they
haven't specified what to do with window functions.  We assume that
those should be treated like aggregates, i.e., left out of the
constructed GROUP BY list.
 
In passing, wordsmith some existing documentation about GROUP BY,
and update some neglected synopsis entries in select_into.sgml.
 
Author: David Christensen <david@pgguru.net>
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAHM0NXjz0kDwtzoe-fnHAqPB1qA8_VJN0XAmCgUZ+iPnvP5LbA@mail.gmail.com

Continue reading Waiting for PostgreSQL 19 – Add GROUP BY ALL.

vtime – time commands with elapsed time visible all the time

Lately I've been running quite a lot of commands that take long time, and was wondering how long they took. Of course I can use the standard time program, but it doesn't show me how long it already took.

So, figured I can write it myself. Result:

vtime demo

You can download it, as always, from shell_utils git repo.

Hope you'll find it useful 🙂