Re: archive_commnad parameter question

[Alan Hodgson <ahodgson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2021-04-19 at 21:09 +0000, Allie Crawford wrote:

Hello,

I am new in PostgreSQL and I am trying to understand what the “test” word is representing in the archive_command configuration that the PostgreSQL documentation is showing as the format on how to set up this parameter

 

archive_command = 'test ! -f /mnt/server/archivedir/%f && cp %p /mnt/server/archivedir/%f'  # Unix

 

Does anybody know what is “test” representing in this parameter configuration?

'test' in this case is an actual executable present on many Unix and Unix-like systems.

In this case it effectively gates the copy (cp) command so that it only runs if the target file does not already exist.