Hello, I searched all through Google Groups, Google, and the Postgres docs, but to no avail. I hope someone can help me out here! I have a file that contains SQL, and some Postgres-specific slash commands. This file calls an external shell script via the backtick mechanism, and saves the value into a psql variable, for latter insertion into a table. It looks something like this: \set password '\'' `/dir/genPass user1` '\'' ... INSERT INTO TEST (password) VALUES (:password); However, in some error scenarios, the /dir/genPass application fails, and returns non-zero. However, in these cases, the stderr of the application just gets stored in the variable, and hence inserted into my table as the password. This is bad, and causes trouble latter... :) BTW, I launch my "sql script" like so: psql MY_DB < populatePasswords.sql Question: how can I cause my populatePasswords.sql script to fail with an error if the /dir/genPass command returns an error? I'm okay with any sort of failure, as long as populatePasswords.sql stops executing and never gets to the INSERT statement. It would also be nice if some sort of error would print to the user ... ideally the stderr from the shell command (genPass). Thank you for your time, David Roche ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@postgresql.org