createdb
Name
createdb -- create a new
PostgreSQL database
Synopsis
createdb [option...] [dbname] [description]
Description
createdb creates a new PostgreSQL
database.
Normally, the database user who executes this command becomes the owner of
the new database.
However a different owner can be specified via the -O
option, if the executing user has appropriate privileges.
createdb is a wrapper around the
SQL command CREATE DATABASE.
There is no effective difference between creating databases via
this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.
Options
createdb accepts the following command-line arguments:
- dbname
Specifies the name of the database to be created. The name must be
unique among all PostgreSQL databases in this cluster.
The default is to create a database with the same name as the
current system user.
- description
Specifies a comment to be associated with the newly created
database.
- -D tablespace
--tablespace tablespace Specifies the default tablespace for the database.
- -e
--echo Echo the commands that createdb generates
and sends to the server.
- -E encoding
--encoding encoding Specifies the character encoding scheme to be used in this
database. The character sets supported by the
PostgreSQL server are described in
Section 22.2.1.
- -O owner
--owner owner Specifies the database user who will own the new database.
- -T template
--template template Specifies the template database from which to build this database.
The options -D, -E,
-O, and
-T correspond to options of the underlying
SQL command CREATE DATABASE; see there for more information
about them.
createdb also accepts the following
command-line arguments for connection parameters:
- -h host
--host host Specifies the host name of the machine on which the
server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used
as the directory for the Unix domain socket.
- -p port
--port port Specifies the TCP port or the local Unix domain socket file
extension on which the server is listening for connections.
- -U username
--username username User name to connect as.
- -W
--password Force createdb to prompt for a
password before connecting to a database.
This option is never essential, since
createdb will automatically prompt
for a password if the server demands password authentication.
However, createdb will waste a
connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password.
In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra
connection attempt.
Environment
- PGDATABASE
If set, the name of the database to create, unless overridden on
the command line.
- PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER Default connection parameters. PGUSER also
determines the name of the database to create, if it is not
specified on the command line or by PGDATABASE.
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities,
also uses the environment variables supported by libpq
(see Section 30.12).
Diagnostics
In case of difficulty, see CREATE DATABASE and psql for
discussions of potential problems and error messages.
The database server must be running at the
targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment
variables used by the libpq front-end
library will apply.
Examples
To create the database demo using the default
database server:
$ createdb demo
To create the database demo using the
server on host eden, port 5000, using the
LATIN1 encoding scheme with a look at the
underlying command:
$ createdb -p 5000 -h eden -E LATIN1 -e demo
CREATE DATABASE demo ENCODING 'LATIN1';
