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
Not a lot of people customize their psql. But for others, like me, there is yet another thing we can do: put search_path in prompt.
Basically, it looks like this:
depesz=# \echo :PROMPT1 %/%R%x%# depesz=# \set PROMPT1 '[%S] %/%R%x%# ' ["$user", public] depesz=# set search_path = 'public, pg_catalog'; SET ["public, pg_catalog"] depesz=# set search_path = public, pg_catalog; SET [public, pg_catalog] depesz=#
All clear, easy to understand. Of course, it will mostly make sense if you actually use search_path – either by setting it manually, or by setting it for db, for user, or for user in db.
That will definitely come in handy – my $work has dbs with hundreds of schemas, and we change search_path every time we have to query some table, otherwise queries would get tedious to type pretty fast.
Thanks a lot to everyone involved 🙂
Yes, finally! I set up prompts in work, so people can see which server they are logged in, which environment it is (prod/staging/dev), but there was no easy way to show current search path.
Having public in there is kind of unnecessary, so hopefully it will be possible to remove it.