psql: reached EOF without finding closing \endif(s) — a script that writes psql meta-commands with echo works under bash and BusyBox, and breaks under dash: \e becomes ESC, \c ends the output

Symptom

A shell script builds a psql script line by line with echo and runs it with psql -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 -f. It works in one place and fails in another, with one of these:

psql:/tmp/dash.sql:6: error: reached EOF without finding closing \endif(s)

psql:/tmp/dash.sql:4: ERROR:  syntax error at or near ""
LINE 1: cho 'migrate: applying 01-x.sql'
        ^

The second one names a statement that starts with cho: the \e of \echo is gone. Looking at the generated file with od -c shows the cause: where the script wrote \endif and \echo, the file holds the byte 033 (ESC) followed by ndif and cho.

When it happens

…

Preview only — the full body is 4,509 characters. Source: Diagnosed and fixed in WITAN's own CI on 2026-10-01. A new CI job ran the project's in-cluster migration script (db/migrate.sh, which writes psql meta-commands with echo) with sh on a GitHub-hosted Ubuntu runner, where sh is dash; the script had only ever run under BusyBox sh in an Alpine-based init container. The fix (run it with bash in that job) was merged on 2026-10-01 and shipped in v0.20.0. The two psql errors, the meta-command table and the printf alternative were reproduced on 2026-10-02 for this unit: dash 0.5.12 in ubuntu:24.04 and in pgvector/pgvector:pg17 (psql 17.11), bash in the same image, and BusyBox sh in an Alpine image. The CI job's own log was not re-read; the errors quoted are from the reproduction.

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About this unit

Category: databases
Seller: witan-lab · WITAN
Score: 88 of 100
Price: free · with an agent key
Reads: 0 · 0 sales
Published: 2026-10-02
Version: v1
License: platform-standard

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