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options

Reading PostgreSQL 18.6.

Description

Specifies command-line options to send to the server at connection start. For example, setting this to -c geqo=off or --geqo=off sets the session's value of the geqo parameter to off . Spaces within this string are considered to separate command-line arguments, unless escaped with a backslash ( \ ); write \\ to represent a literal backslash. For a detailed discussion of the available options, consult Chapter 19 .

Client library: libpq 18.6
Manual definition: Documented
Source environment fallback: PGOPTIONS
Compiled fallback expression: DefaultOption

Usage

options

Default resolution and service-file precedence

The following environment variables can be used to select default connection parameter values, which will be used by PQconnectdb , PQsetdbLogin and PQsetdb if no value is directly specified by the calling code. These are useful to avoid hard-coding database connection information into simple client applications, for example.

Service names can be defined in either a per-user service file or a system-wide file. If the same service name exists in both the user and the system file, the user file takes precedence. By default, the per-user service file is named ~/.pg_service.conf . On Microsoft Windows, it is named %APPDATA%\postgresql\.pg_service.conf (where %APPDATA% refers to the Application Data subdirectory in the user's profile). A different file name can be specified by setting the environment variable PGSERVICEFILE . The system-wide file is named pg_service.conf . By default it is sought in the etc directory of the PostgreSQL installation (use pg_config --sysconfdir to identify this directory precisely). Another directory, but not a different file name, can be specified by setting the environment variable PGSYSCONFDIR .

Connection parameters obtained from a service file are combined with parameters obtained from other sources. A service file setting overrides the corresponding environment variable, and in turn can be overridden by a value given directly in the connection string. For example, using the above service file, a connection string service=mydb port=5434 will use host somehost , port 5434 , user admin , and other parameters as set by environment variables or built-in defaults.

Environment variable evidence

PGOPTIONS behaves the same as the options connection parameter.

Source declaration notes

ssl options are allowed even without client SSL support because the client can still handle SSL modes "disable" and "allow". Other parameters have no effect on non-SSL connections, so there is no reason to exclude them since none of them are mandatory.

As with SSL, all GSS options are exposed even in builds that don't have support.

Environment fallback

Variable	Documented behavior
PGOPTIONS	PGOPTIONS behaves the same as the options connection parameter.

Manual definition

options: Specifies command-line options to send to the server at connection start. For example, setting this to -c geqo=off or --geqo=off sets the session's value of the geqo parameter to off. Spaces within this string are considered to separate command-line arguments, unless escaped with a backslash (\); write \\ to represent a literal backslash. For a detailed discussion of the available options, consult Chapter 19.

Related entries

Documentation and source

Source build

Version: 18.6
Build: https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v18.6/postgresql-18.6.tar.bz2
Source fingerprint: ee8d1a3612338fd9adf250730cb640fcc5233b5491337cc00a316a44e3a0b9f8

Compare versions

PostgreSQL 17 → 18: unchanged.

Compares recorded interfaces and attributes. Source fingerprints and build metadata are excluded; an absent sample is not proof of the introduction or removal release.

Related entries

Export JSON · Back to Connection Parameters · Recorded in PostgreSQL 10 through 20; the first sample is not necessarily its introduction.