Re: SQL from the command line

I've seen a couple of responses which seem to go off at a tangent to the question asked, so here's my answer which is, I hope, more to the point. }From: Andy Cordell <andy@bnr.ca> }Date: 21 Feb 1995 21:29:54 GMT }X-Informix-List-Id: <news.11700> } }What is the proper way to provide a SQL command line interface to }a user without making them create a sql command file to issue a }command? What I'd like is the ability to type something like }this on the unix command line: } }<dbname> <SQL command here> }The response would come back to stdout. } }This is the almost working script that I wrote: } }#! /bin/sh }echo "$@" > temp.sql }dbaccess -e <dbname> temp.sql } }The only problem with this is that it expands the * in }"select * from <table> " to be the current directory listing, so }I end up with : }select <insert really big directory listing here> from <table> }as my SQL command, which is not good. This is not an Informix problem but a shell problem. The * on the command line would have to be escaped somehow so that the shell does not do the expansion. I'd use quotes around the whole command: sqlcmd -d dbase -e "select * from systables where tabname = 'systables'" sqlcmd -d dbase -e 'select * from systables where tabname = "systables"' Your script is a reasonable starting point for exactly that sort of processing. The rest is education of the user. }Is this the right approach? Is there already a utility that will }provide SQL statements (not cmd files) from the command line? You can dig my ESQL/C program SQLCMD out of the archives. It uses exactly the notation I used above. But even it cannot protect users from the shell. Yours, Jonathan Leffler (johnl@informix.com) #include <disclaimer.h>