On Thu, May 3, 2018 at 11:36 AM, Ron <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Since "pg_dump -Fd" needs a "--file" option to say where to put the dump directory, it seemed reasonable that "pg_restore -Fd" would need a --file to know where the dump directory is.
It would make sense, but the docs do explicitly say it's for an output file. The output file is the SQL script generation option when not running on an actual database.
pg_restore can operate in two modes. If a database name is specified, pg_restore connects to that database and restores archive contents directly into the database. Otherwise, a script containing the SQL commands necessary to rebuild the database is created and written to a file or standard output. This script output is equivalent to the plain text output format of pg_dump. Some of the options controlling the output are therefore analogous to pg_dump options.