How to execute multiple queries using psql command from bash shell?

I need to execute postgresql queries from command line using psql -c command. For every psql command, it opens a new tcp connection to connect to the database server and execute query which is a overhead for large number of queries.

Currently I can execute single query like this:

psql -U postgres -h <ip_addr> -c "SELECT * FROM xyz_table;"

When I tried to execute multiple queries as below, but only the last query got executed.

psql -U postgres -h <ip_addr> -c "SELECT * FROM xyz_table; SELECT * FROM abc_table;"

Can anyone help me and tell me the proper way to do it?

Solution 1:

-c processes only one command. Without it however psql expects commands to be passed into standard input, e.g.:

psql -U postgres -h <ip_addr> <database_name> << EOF
SELECT * FROM xyz_table;
SELECT * FROM abc_table;
EOF

Or by using echo and pipes.

Solution 2:

at least from 9.6.2 this approach works as well:

psql -c "select now()" -c "select version()" -U postgres -h 127.0.0.1

now

2017-12-26 20:25:45.874935+01 (1 row)

version

PostgreSQL 9.6.2 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Ubuntu 5.3.1-14ubuntu2) 5.3.1 20160413, 64-bit (1 row)