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COPY

   COPY — copy data between a file and a table

Synopsis

COPY table_name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ]
    FROM { 'filename' | PROGRAM 'command' | STDIN }
    [ [ WITH ] ( option [, ...] ) ]
    [ WHERE condition ]

COPY { table_name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ] | ( query ) }
    TO { 'filename' | PROGRAM 'command' | STDOUT }
    [ [ WITH ] ( option [, ...] ) ]

where option can be one of:

    FORMAT format_name
    FREEZE [ boolean ]
    DELIMITER 'delimiter_character'
    NULL 'null_string'
    DEFAULT 'default_string'
    HEADER [ boolean | MATCH ]
    QUOTE 'quote_character'
    ESCAPE 'escape_character'
    FORCE_QUOTE { ( column_name [, ...] ) | * }
    FORCE_NOT_NULL { ( column_name [, ...] ) | * }
    FORCE_NULL { ( column_name [, ...] ) | * }
    ON_ERROR error_action
    REJECT_LIMIT maxerror
    ENCODING 'encoding_name'
    LOG_VERBOSITY verbosity

Description

   COPY moves data between PostgreSQL tables and standard file-system
   files. COPY TO copies the contents of a table to a file, while COPY
   FROM copies data from a file to a table (appending the data to whatever
   is in the table already). COPY TO can also copy the results of a SELECT
   query.

   If a column list is specified, COPY TO copies only the data in the
   specified columns to the file. For COPY FROM, each field in the file is
   inserted, in order, into the specified column. Table columns not
   specified in the COPY FROM column list will receive their default
   values.

   COPY with a file name instructs the PostgreSQL server to directly read
   from or write to a file. The file must be accessible by the PostgreSQL
   user (the user ID the server runs as) and the name must be specified
   from the viewpoint of the server. When PROGRAM is specified, the server
   executes the given command and reads from the standard output of the
   program, or writes to the standard input of the program. The command
   must be specified from the viewpoint of the server, and be executable
   by the PostgreSQL user. When STDIN or STDOUT is specified, data is
   transmitted via the connection between the client and the server.

   Each backend running COPY will report its progress in the
   pg_stat_progress_copy view. See Section 27.4.3 for details.

   By default, COPY will fail if it encounters an error during processing.
   For use cases where a best-effort attempt at loading the entire file is
   desired, the ON_ERROR clause can be used to specify some other
   behavior.

Parameters

   table_name
          The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table.

   column_name
          An optional list of columns to be copied. If no column list is
          specified, all columns of the table except generated columns
          will be copied.

   query
          A SELECT, VALUES, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or MERGE command whose
          results are to be copied. Note that parentheses are required
          around the query.

          For INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE queries a RETURNING clause
          must be provided, and the target relation must not have a
          conditional rule, nor an ALSO rule, nor an INSTEAD rule that
          expands to multiple statements.

   filename
          The path name of the input or output file. An input file name
          can be an absolute or relative path, but an output file name
          must be an absolute path. Windows users might need to use an E''
          string and double any backslashes used in the path name.

   PROGRAM
          A command to execute. In COPY FROM, the input is read from
          standard output of the command, and in COPY TO, the output is
          written to the standard input of the command.

          Note that the command is invoked by the shell, so if you need to
          pass any arguments that come from an untrusted source, you must
          be careful to strip or escape any special characters that might
          have a special meaning for the shell. For security reasons, it
          is best to use a fixed command string, or at least avoid
          including any user input in it.

   STDIN
          Specifies that input comes from the client application.

   STDOUT
          Specifies that output goes to the client application.

   boolean
          Specifies whether the selected option should be turned on or
          off. You can write TRUE, ON, or 1 to enable the option, and
          FALSE, OFF, or 0 to disable it. The boolean value can also be
          omitted, in which case TRUE is assumed.

   FORMAT
          Selects the data format to be read or written: text, csv (Comma
          Separated Values), or binary. The default is text. See File
          Formats below for details.

   FREEZE
          Requests copying the data with rows already frozen, just as they
          would be after running the VACUUM FREEZE command. This is
          intended as a performance option for initial data loading. Rows
          will be frozen only if the table being loaded has been created
          or truncated in the current subtransaction, there are no cursors
          open and there are no older snapshots held by this transaction.
          It is currently not possible to perform a COPY FREEZE on a
          partitioned table or foreign table. This option is only allowed
          in COPY FROM.

          Note that all other sessions will immediately be able to see the
          data once it has been successfully loaded. This violates the
          normal rules of MVCC visibility and users should be aware of the
          potential problems this might cause.

   DELIMITER
          Specifies the character that separates columns within each row
          (line) of the file. The default is a tab character in text
          format, a comma in CSV format. This must be a single one-byte
          character. This option is not allowed when using binary format.

   NULL
          Specifies the string that represents a null value. The default
          is \N (backslash-N) in text format, and an unquoted empty string
          in CSV format. You might prefer an empty string even in text
          format for cases where you don't want to distinguish nulls from
          empty strings. This option is not allowed when using binary
          format.

Note

          When using COPY FROM, any data item that matches this string
          will be stored as a null value, so you should make sure that you
          use the same string as you used with COPY TO.

   DEFAULT
          Specifies the string that represents a default value. Each time
          the string is found in the input file, the default value of the
          corresponding column will be used. This option is allowed only
          in COPY FROM, and only when not using binary format.

   HEADER
          Specifies that the file contains a header line with the names of
          each column in the file. On output, the first line contains the
          column names from the table. On input, the first line is
          discarded when this option is set to true (or equivalent Boolean
          value). If this option is set to MATCH, the number and names of
          the columns in the header line must match the actual column
          names of the table, in order; otherwise an error is raised. This
          option is not allowed when using binary format. The MATCH option
          is only valid for COPY FROM commands.

   QUOTE
          Specifies the quoting character to be used when a data value is
          quoted. The default is double-quote. This must be a single
          one-byte character. This option is allowed only when using CSV
          format.

   ESCAPE
          Specifies the character that should appear before a data
          character that matches the QUOTE value. The default is the same
          as the QUOTE value (so that the quoting character is doubled if
          it appears in the data). This must be a single one-byte
          character. This option is allowed only when using CSV format.

   FORCE_QUOTE
          Forces quoting to be used for all non-NULL values in each
          specified column. NULL output is never quoted. If * is
          specified, non-NULL values will be quoted in all columns. This
          option is allowed only in COPY TO, and only when using CSV
          format.

   FORCE_NOT_NULL
          Do not match the specified columns' values against the null
          string. In the default case where the null string is empty, this
          means that empty values will be read as zero-length strings
          rather than nulls, even when they are not quoted. If * is
          specified, the option will be applied to all columns. This
          option is allowed only in COPY FROM, and only when using CSV
          format.

   FORCE_NULL
          Match the specified columns' values against the null string,
          even if it has been quoted, and if a match is found set the
          value to NULL. In the default case where the null string is
          empty, this converts a quoted empty string into NULL. If * is
          specified, the option will be applied to all columns. This
          option is allowed only in COPY FROM, and only when using CSV
          format.

   ON_ERROR
          Specifies how to behave when encountering an error converting a
          column's input value into its data type. An error_action value
          of stop means fail the command, while ignore means discard the
          input row and continue with the next one. The default is stop.

          The ignore option is applicable only for COPY FROM when the
          FORMAT is text or csv.

          A NOTICE message containing the ignored row count is emitted at
          the end of the COPY FROM if at least one row was discarded. When
          LOG_VERBOSITY option is set to verbose, a NOTICE message
          containing the line of the input file and the column name whose
          input conversion has failed is emitted for each discarded row.
          When it is set to silent, no message is emitted regarding
          ignored rows.

   REJECT_LIMIT
          Specifies the maximum number of errors tolerated while
          converting a column's input value to its data type, when
          ON_ERROR is set to ignore. If the input causes more errors than
          the specified value, the COPY command fails, even with ON_ERROR
          set to ignore. This clause must be used with ON_ERROR=ignore and
          maxerror must be positive bigint. If not specified,
          ON_ERROR=ignore allows an unlimited number of errors, meaning
          COPY will skip all erroneous data.

   ENCODING
          Specifies that the file is encoded in the encoding_name. If this
          option is omitted, the current client encoding is used. See the
          Notes below for more details.

   LOG_VERBOSITY
          Specifies the amount of messages emitted by a COPY command:
          default, verbose, or silent. If verbose is specified, additional
          messages are emitted during processing. silent suppresses both
          verbose and default messages.

          This is currently used in COPY FROM command when ON_ERROR option
          is set to ignore.

   WHERE
          The optional WHERE clause has the general form

WHERE condition

          where condition is any expression that evaluates to a result of
          type boolean. Any row that does not satisfy this condition will
          not be inserted to the table. A row satisfies the condition if
          it returns true when the actual row values are substituted for
          any variable references.

          Currently, subqueries are not allowed in WHERE expressions, and
          the evaluation does not see any changes made by the COPY itself
          (this matters when the expression contains calls to VOLATILE
          functions).

Outputs

   On successful completion, a COPY command returns a command tag of the
   form
COPY count

   The count is the number of rows copied.

Note

   psql will print this command tag only if the command was not COPY ...
   TO STDOUT, or the equivalent psql meta-command \copy ... to stdout.
   This is to prevent confusing the command tag with the data that was
   just printed.

Notes

   COPY TO can be used with plain tables and populated materialized views.
   For example, COPY table TO copies the same rows as SELECT * FROM ONLY
   table. However it doesn't directly support other relation types, such
   as partitioned tables, inheritance child tables, or views. To copy all
   rows from such relations, use COPY (SELECT * FROM table) TO.

   COPY FROM can be used with plain, foreign, or partitioned tables or
   with views that have INSTEAD OF INSERT triggers.

   You must have select privilege on the table whose values are read by
   COPY TO, and insert privilege on the table into which values are
   inserted by COPY FROM. It is sufficient to have column privileges on
   the column(s) listed in the command.

   If row-level security is enabled for the table, the relevant SELECT
   policies will apply to COPY table TO statements. Currently, COPY FROM
   is not supported for tables with row-level security. Use equivalent
   INSERT statements instead.

   Files named in a COPY command are read or written directly by the
   server, not by the client application. Therefore, they must reside on
   or be accessible to the database server machine, not the client. They
   must be accessible to and readable or writable by the PostgreSQL user
   (the user ID the server runs as), not the client. Similarly, the
   command specified with PROGRAM is executed directly by the server, not
   by the client application, must be executable by the PostgreSQL user.
   COPY naming a file or command is only allowed to database superusers or
   users who are granted one of the roles pg_read_server_files,
   pg_write_server_files, or pg_execute_server_program, since it allows
   reading or writing any file or running a program that the server has
   privileges to access.

   Do not confuse COPY with the psql instruction \copy. \copy invokes COPY
   FROM STDIN or COPY TO STDOUT, and then fetches/stores the data in a
   file accessible to the psql client. Thus, file accessibility and access
   rights depend on the client rather than the server when \copy is used.

   It is recommended that the file name used in COPY always be specified
   as an absolute path. This is enforced by the server in the case of COPY
   TO, but for COPY FROM you do have the option of reading from a file
   specified by a relative path. The path will be interpreted relative to
   the working directory of the server process (normally the cluster's
   data directory), not the client's working directory.

   Executing a command with PROGRAM might be restricted by the operating
   system's access control mechanisms, such as SELinux.

   COPY FROM will invoke any triggers and check constraints on the
   destination table. However, it will not invoke rules.

   For identity columns, the COPY FROM command will always write the
   column values provided in the input data, like the INSERT option
   OVERRIDING SYSTEM VALUE.

   COPY input and output is affected by DateStyle. To ensure portability
   to other PostgreSQL installations that might use non-default DateStyle
   settings, DateStyle should be set to ISO before using COPY TO. It is
   also a good idea to avoid dumping data with IntervalStyle set to
   sql_standard, because negative interval values might be misinterpreted
   by a server that has a different setting for IntervalStyle.

   Input data is interpreted according to ENCODING option or the current
   client encoding, and output data is encoded in ENCODING or the current
   client encoding, even if the data does not pass through the client but
   is read from or written to a file directly by the server.

   The COPY FROM command physically inserts input rows into the table as
   it progresses. If the command fails, these rows are left in a deleted
   state; these rows will not be visible, but still occupy disk space.
   This might amount to considerable wasted disk space if the failure
   happened well into a large copy operation. VACUUM should be used to
   recover the wasted space.

   FORCE_NULL and FORCE_NOT_NULL can be used simultaneously on the same
   column. This results in converting quoted null strings to null values
   and unquoted null strings to empty strings.

File Formats

Text Format

   When the text format is used, the data read or written is a text file
   with one line per table row. Columns in a row are separated by the
   delimiter character. The column values themselves are strings generated
   by the output function, or acceptable to the input function, of each
   attribute's data type. The specified null string is used in place of
   columns that are null. COPY FROM will raise an error if any line of the
   input file contains more or fewer columns than are expected.

   End of data can be represented by a line containing just
   backslash-period (\.). An end-of-data marker is not necessary when
   reading from a file, since the end of file serves perfectly well; in
   that context this provision exists only for backward compatibility.
   However, psql uses \. to terminate a COPY FROM STDIN operation (that
   is, reading in-line COPY data in an SQL script). In that context the
   rule is needed to be able to end the operation before the end of the
   script.

   Backslash characters (\) can be used in the COPY data to quote data
   characters that might otherwise be taken as row or column delimiters.
   In particular, the following characters must be preceded by a backslash
   if they appear as part of a column value: backslash itself, newline,
   carriage return, and the current delimiter character.

   The specified null string is sent by COPY TO without adding any
   backslashes; conversely, COPY FROM matches the input against the null
   string before removing backslashes. Therefore, a null string such as \N
   cannot be confused with the actual data value \N (which would be
   represented as \\N).

   The following special backslash sequences are recognized by COPY FROM:
   Sequence Represents
   \b Backspace (ASCII 8)
   \f Form feed (ASCII 12)
   \n Newline (ASCII 10)
   \r Carriage return (ASCII 13)
   \t Tab (ASCII 9)
   \v Vertical tab (ASCII 11)
   \digits Backslash followed by one to three octal digits specifies the
   byte with that numeric code
   \xdigits Backslash x followed by one or two hex digits specifies the
   byte with that numeric code

   Presently, COPY TO will never emit an octal or hex-digits backslash
   sequence, but it does use the other sequences listed above for those
   control characters.

   Any other backslashed character that is not mentioned in the above
   table will be taken to represent itself. However, beware of adding
   backslashes unnecessarily, since that might accidentally produce a
   string matching the end-of-data marker (\.) or the null string (\N by
   default). These strings will be recognized before any other backslash
   processing is done.

   It is strongly recommended that applications generating COPY data
   convert data newlines and carriage returns to the \n and \r sequences
   respectively. At present it is possible to represent a data carriage
   return by a backslash and carriage return, and to represent a data
   newline by a backslash and newline. However, these representations
   might not be accepted in future releases. They are also highly
   vulnerable to corruption if the COPY file is transferred across
   different machines (for example, from Unix to Windows or vice versa).

   All backslash sequences are interpreted after encoding conversion. The
   bytes specified with the octal and hex-digit backslash sequences must
   form valid characters in the database encoding.

   COPY TO will terminate each row with a Unix-style newline (“\n”).
   Servers running on Microsoft Windows instead output carriage
   return/newline (“\r\n”), but only for COPY to a server file; for
   consistency across platforms, COPY TO STDOUT always sends “\n”
   regardless of server platform. COPY FROM can handle lines ending with
   newlines, carriage returns, or carriage return/newlines. To reduce the
   risk of error due to un-backslashed newlines or carriage returns that
   were meant as data, COPY FROM will complain if the line endings in the
   input are not all alike.

CSV Format

   This format option is used for importing and exporting the Comma-
   Separated Value (CSV) file format used by many other programs, such as
   spreadsheets. Instead of the escaping rules used by PostgreSQL's
   standard text format, it produces and recognizes the common CSV
   escaping mechanism.

   The values in each record are separated by the DELIMITER character. If
   the value contains the delimiter character, the QUOTE character, the
   NULL string, a carriage return, or line feed character, then the whole
   value is prefixed and suffixed by the QUOTE character, and any
   occurrence within the value of a QUOTE character or the ESCAPE
   character is preceded by the escape character. You can also use
   FORCE_QUOTE to force quotes when outputting non-NULL values in specific
   columns.

   The CSV format has no standard way to distinguish a NULL value from an
   empty string. PostgreSQL's COPY handles this by quoting. A NULL is
   output as the NULL parameter string and is not quoted, while a non-NULL
   value matching the NULL parameter string is quoted. For example, with
   the default settings, a NULL is written as an unquoted empty string,
   while an empty string data value is written with double quotes ("").
   Reading values follows similar rules. You can use FORCE_NOT_NULL to
   prevent NULL input comparisons for specific columns. You can also use
   FORCE_NULL to convert quoted null string data values to NULL.

   Because backslash is not a special character in the CSV format, the
   end-of-data marker used in text mode (\.) is not normally treated as
   special when reading CSV data. An exception is that psql will terminate
   a COPY FROM STDIN operation (that is, reading in-line COPY data in an
   SQL script) at a line containing only \., whether it is text or CSV
   mode.

Note

   PostgreSQL versions before v18 always recognized unquoted \. as an
   end-of-data marker, even when reading from a separate file. For
   compatibility with older versions, COPY TO will quote \. when it's
   alone on a line, even though this is no longer necessary.

Note

   In CSV format, all characters are significant. A quoted value
   surrounded by white space, or any characters other than DELIMITER, will
   include those characters. This can cause errors if you import data from
   a system that pads CSV lines with white space out to some fixed width.
   If such a situation arises you might need to preprocess the CSV file to
   remove the trailing white space, before importing the data into
   PostgreSQL.

Note

   CSV format will both recognize and produce CSV files with quoted values
   containing embedded carriage returns and line feeds. Thus the files are
   not strictly one line per table row like text-format files.

Note

   Many programs produce strange and occasionally perverse CSV files, so
   the file format is more a convention than a standard. Thus you might
   encounter some files that cannot be imported using this mechanism, and
   COPY might produce files that other programs cannot process.

Binary Format

   The binary format option causes all data to be stored/read as binary
   format rather than as text. It is somewhat faster than the text and CSV
   formats, but a binary-format file is less portable across machine
   architectures and PostgreSQL versions. Also, the binary format is very
   data type specific; for example it will not work to output binary data
   from a smallint column and read it into an integer column, even though
   that would work fine in text format.

   The binary file format consists of a file header, zero or more tuples
   containing the row data, and a file trailer. Headers and data are in
   network byte order.

Note

   PostgreSQL releases before 7.4 used a different binary file format.

File Header

   The file header consists of 15 bytes of fixed fields, followed by a
   variable-length header extension area. The fixed fields are:

   Signature
          11-byte sequence PGCOPY\n\377\r\n\0 — note that the zero byte is
          a required part of the signature. (The signature is designed to
          allow easy identification of files that have been munged by a
          non-8-bit-clean transfer. This signature will be changed by
          end-of-line-translation filters, dropped zero bytes, dropped
          high bits, or parity changes.)

   Flags field
          32-bit integer bit mask to denote important aspects of the file
          format. Bits are numbered from 0 (LSB) to 31 (MSB). Note that
          this field is stored in network byte order (most significant
          byte first), as are all the integer fields used in the file
          format. Bits 16–31 are reserved to denote critical file format
          issues; a reader should abort if it finds an unexpected bit set
          in this range. Bits 0–15 are reserved to signal
          backwards-compatible format issues; a reader should simply
          ignore any unexpected bits set in this range. Currently only one
          flag bit is defined, and the rest must be zero:

        Bit 16
                If 1, OIDs are included in the data; if 0, not. Oid system
                columns are not supported in PostgreSQL anymore, but the
                format still contains the indicator.

   Header extension area length
          32-bit integer, length in bytes of remainder of header, not
          including self. Currently, this is zero, and the first tuple
          follows immediately. Future changes to the format might allow
          additional data to be present in the header. A reader should
          silently skip over any header extension data it does not know
          what to do with.

   The header extension area is envisioned to contain a sequence of
   self-identifying chunks. The flags field is not intended to tell
   readers what is in the extension area. Specific design of header
   extension contents is left for a later release.

   This design allows for both backwards-compatible header additions (add
   header extension chunks, or set low-order flag bits) and
   non-backwards-compatible changes (set high-order flag bits to signal
   such changes, and add supporting data to the extension area if needed).

Tuples

   Each tuple begins with a 16-bit integer count of the number of fields
   in the tuple. (Presently, all tuples in a table will have the same
   count, but that might not always be true.) Then, repeated for each
   field in the tuple, there is a 32-bit length word followed by that many
   bytes of field data. (The length word does not include itself, and can
   be zero.) As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL field value. No value
   bytes follow in the NULL case.

   There is no alignment padding or any other extra data between fields.

   Presently, all data values in a binary-format file are assumed to be in
   binary format (format code one). It is anticipated that a future
   extension might add a header field that allows per-column format codes
   to be specified.

   To determine the appropriate binary format for the actual tuple data
   you should consult the PostgreSQL source, in particular the *send and
   *recv functions for each column's data type (typically these functions
   are found in the src/backend/utils/adt/ directory of the source
   distribution).

   If OIDs are included in the file, the OID field immediately follows the
   field-count word. It is a normal field except that it's not included in
   the field-count. Note that oid system columns are not supported in
   current versions of PostgreSQL.

File Trailer

   The file trailer consists of a 16-bit integer word containing -1. This
   is easily distinguished from a tuple's field-count word.

   A reader should report an error if a field-count word is neither -1 nor
   the expected number of columns. This provides an extra check against
   somehow getting out of sync with the data.

Examples

   The following example copies a table to the client using the vertical
   bar (|) as the field delimiter:
COPY country TO STDOUT (DELIMITER '|');

   To copy data from a file into the country table:
COPY country FROM '/usr1/proj/bray/sql/country_data';

   To copy into a file just the countries whose names start with 'A':
COPY (SELECT * FROM country WHERE country_name LIKE 'A%') TO '/usr1/proj/bray/sq
l/a_list_countries.copy';

   To copy into a compressed file, you can pipe the output through an
   external compression program:
COPY country TO PROGRAM 'gzip > /usr1/proj/bray/sql/country_data.gz';

   Here is a sample of data suitable for copying into a table from STDIN:
AF      AFGHANISTAN
AL      ALBANIA
DZ      ALGERIA
ZM      ZAMBIA
ZW      ZIMBABWE

   Note that the white space on each line is actually a tab character.

   The following is the same data, output in binary format. The data is
   shown after filtering through the Unix utility od -c. The table has
   three columns; the first has type char(2), the second has type text,
   and the third has type integer. All the rows have a null value in the
   third column.
0000000   P   G   C   O   P   Y  \n 377  \r  \n  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
0000020  \0  \0  \0  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   A   F  \0  \0  \0 013   A
0000040   F   G   H   A   N   I   S   T   A   N 377 377 377 377  \0 003
0000060  \0  \0  \0 002   A   L  \0  \0  \0 007   A   L   B   A   N   I
0000100   A 377 377 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   D   Z  \0  \0  \0
0000120 007   A   L   G   E   R   I   A 377 377 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0
0000140  \0 002   Z   M  \0  \0  \0 006   Z   A   M   B   I   A 377 377
0000160 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   Z   W  \0  \0  \0  \b   Z   I
0000200   M   B   A   B   W   E 377 377 377 377 377 377

Compatibility

   There is no COPY statement in the SQL standard.

   The following syntax was used before PostgreSQL version 9.0 and is
   still supported:
COPY table_name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ]
    FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
    [ [ WITH ]
          [ BINARY ]
          [ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter_character' ]
          [ NULL [ AS ] 'null_string' ]
          [ CSV [ HEADER ]
                [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote_character' ]
                [ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape_character' ]
                [ FORCE NOT NULL column_name [, ...] ] ] ]

COPY { table_name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ] | ( query ) }
    TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
    [ [ WITH ]
          [ BINARY ]
          [ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter_character' ]
          [ NULL [ AS ] 'null_string' ]
          [ CSV [ HEADER ]
                [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote_character' ]
                [ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape_character' ]
                [ FORCE QUOTE { column_name [, ...] | * } ] ] ]

   Note that in this syntax, BINARY and CSV are treated as independent
   keywords, not as arguments of a FORMAT option.

   The following syntax was used before PostgreSQL version 7.3 and is
   still supported:
COPY [ BINARY ] table_name
    FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
    [ [USING] DELIMITERS 'delimiter_character' ]
    [ WITH NULL AS 'null_string' ]

COPY [ BINARY ] table_name
    TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
    [ [USING] DELIMITERS 'delimiter_character' ]
    [ WITH NULL AS 'null_string' ]

See Also

   Section 27.4.3