Allow psql variable substitution to occur in backtick command strings.

Previously, text between backquotes in a psql metacommand's arguments
was always passed to the shell literally.  That considerably hobbles
the usefulness of the feature for scripting, so we'd foreseen for a long
time that we'd someday want to allow substitution of psql variables into
the shell command.  IMO the addition of \if metacommands has brought us to
that point, since \if can greatly benefit from some sort of client-side
expression evaluation capability, and psql itself is not going to grow any
such thing in time for v10.  Hence, this patch.  It allows :VARIABLE to be
replaced by the exact contents of the named variable, while :'VARIABLE'
is replaced by the variable's contents suitably quoted to become a single
shell-command argument.  (The quoting rules for that are different from
those for SQL literals, so this is a bit of an abuse of the :'VARIABLE'
notation, but I doubt anyone will be confused.)

As with other situations in psql, no substitution occurs if the word
following a colon is not a known variable name.  That limits the risk of
compatibility problems for existing psql scripts; but the risk isn't zero,
so this needs to be called out in the v10 release notes.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/9561.1490895211@sss.pgh.pa.us

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 9 deletions

diff --git a/src/fe_utils/string_utils.c b/src/fe_utils/string_utils.c
index d1a9ddc4c6c..dc84d32a097 100644
--- a/src/fe_utils/string_utils.c
+++ b/src/fe_utils/string_utils.c
@@ -425,13 +425,30 @@ appendByteaLiteral(PQExpBuffer buf, const unsigned char *str, size_t length,
  * arguments containing LF or CR characters.  A future major release should
  * reject those characters in CREATE ROLE and CREATE DATABASE, because use
  * there eventually leads to errors here.
+ *
+ * appendShellString() simply prints an error and dies if LF or CR appears.
+ * appendShellStringNoError() omits those characters from the result, and
+ * returns false if there were any.
  */
 void
 appendShellString(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
 {
+	if (!appendShellStringNoError(buf, str))
+	{
+		fprintf(stderr,
+				_("shell command argument contains a newline or carriage return: \"%s\"\n"),
+				str);
+		exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
+	}
+}
+
+bool
+appendShellStringNoError(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
+{
 #ifdef WIN32
 	int			backslash_run_length = 0;
 #endif
+	bool		ok = true;
 	const char *p;
 
 	/*
@@ -442,7 +459,7 @@ appendShellString(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
 		strspn(str, "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789-_./:") == strlen(str))
 	{
 		appendPQExpBufferStr(buf, str);
-		return;
+		return ok;
 	}
 
 #ifndef WIN32
@@ -451,10 +468,8 @@ appendShellString(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
 	{
 		if (*p == '\n' || *p == '\r')
 		{
-			fprintf(stderr,
-					_("shell command argument contains a newline or carriage return: \"%s\"\n"),
-					str);
-			exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
+			ok = false;
+			continue;
 		}
 
 		if (*p == '\'')
@@ -481,10 +496,8 @@ appendShellString(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
 	{
 		if (*p == '\n' || *p == '\r')
 		{
-			fprintf(stderr,
-					_("shell command argument contains a newline or carriage return: \"%s\"\n"),
-					str);
-			exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
+			ok = false;
+			continue;
 		}
 
 		/* Change N backslashes before a double quote to 2N+1 backslashes. */
@@ -524,6 +537,8 @@ appendShellString(PQExpBuffer buf, const char *str)
 	}
 	appendPQExpBufferStr(buf, "^\"");
 #endif   /* WIN32 */
+
+	return ok;
 }