On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 09:54:21PM -0400, Igor Tandetnik scratched on the wall: > Pete Helgren <p...@valadd.com> wrote: > > I have a need to create a database if it doesn't already exist. The > > obvious solution is to just use: > > > > sqlite3 newdatabase.db > > > > Except that it not only creates the db but also opens that db for > > commands. I am running this from a script so I want to just want to run > > the command from a script so that I know the database exists before > > issuing other commands. > > Try something like > > echo ".exit" | sqlite3 newdatabase.db
Except that won't work**, since creating the database file is a lazy operation. There are several ways to force the creation of a zero-byte file (open/commit a transaction, for example), but that can be done with something as simple as "touch(1)". Creating the file and writing the full database header (making it a recognizable SQLite file) requires putting something into the sqlite3_master table (e.g. creating a user-defined table). This could be done with any CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS... statement. Of course, I'm not sure what the big deal is. By default, if you attempt to open an SQLite database file that does not exist, the system will just go ahead and create it. This sounds like exactly the desired behavior. There is no need to pre-create the file. Assuming the start-up process continues with a series of CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS... statements, a new database will have the file created and defined, while an existing database will create/ignore the tables depending on the existing structure. ** Who are you, and what did you do with Igor? -j -- Jay A. Kreibich < J A Y @ K R E I B I.C H > "Intelligence is like underwear: it is important that you have it, but showing it to the wrong people has the tendency to make them feel uncomfortable." -- Angela Johnson _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
