createdb — create a new PostgreSQL database
createdb [option...] [dbname] [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.
createdb accepts the following command-line arguments:
dbnameSpecifies 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.
descriptionSpecifies 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 21.2.1, “Supported Character Sets”.
-O owner--owner owner
Specifies the database user who will own the new database.
-q--quiet
Do not display a response.
-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 password prompt.
PGDATABASEIf set, the name of the database to create, unless overridden on the command line.
PGHOSTPGPORTPGUSER
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.
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.
To create the database demo using the default
database server:
$createdb demoCREATE DATABASE
The response is the same as you would have gotten from running the
CREATE DATABASE SQL command.
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 demoCREATE DATABASE "demo" WITH ENCODING = 'LATIN1'CREATE DATABASE