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Is there any way how to express a variable in PostgreSQL as a string?

Example:

\set table_name countries
SELECT 'SELECT * FROM ' || CAST( :table_name, 'text' ) AS specificQuery;

leads to this error:

ERROR:  syntax error at or near ","
LINE 1: SELECT 'SELECT * FROM ' || CAST( countries, 'text' ) AS specificQuery;

From the line sample above is obvious, that it doesn't convert "countries" to a string, but it is expressed as name of column/table.

How do I convert it?

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Are you looking for something like this?:

SELECT * FROM :"table_name";

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/app-psql.html#APP-PSQL-VARIABLES

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up vote 1 down vote

Something like this :

SELECT 'SELECT * FROM ' || countries::text AS specificQuery;
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I'm not sure you've got the original idea... I have countries as a content of a variable. Anyway, I guess you mean table_name::text or :table_name::text, but none of that works. – Radek Simko May 13 at 21:19
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