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

Question

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?

Answer 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.