Can't copy table to another database with pg_dump - postgresql

Question

I'm trying to copy a table from one database to another database (NOT schema). The code I used in terminal is as below:
pg_dump -U postgres -t OldSchema.TableToCopy OldDatabase | psql -U postgres -d NewDatabase
When I press Enter it requests postgres password I enter my pass and then It requests psql password. I enter it and press Enter. I receive lots of:
invalid command \N
ERROR: relation "TableToCopy" does not exist
Both tables have UTF8 encoding. Am I doing something wrong?
OS: windows XP
Error output:
psql:TblToCopy.sql:39236: invalid command \N
psql:TblToCopy.sql:39237: invalid command \N
psql:TblToCopy.sql:39238: invalid command \N
.
.
.
After Hundreds of above errors, the terminal echoes:
psql:TblToCopy.sql:39245: ERROR: syntax error at or near "509"
LINE 1: 509 some gibberish words and letters here
And Finally:
sql:TblToCopy.sql:39245: ERROR: relation "TableToCopy" does not exist
EDIT
I read this response to the same problem \N error with psql , it says to use INSERT instead of COPY, but in the file pg_dump created COPY. How to say to pg_dump to use INSERT instead of COPY?
I converted the file with iconv to utf-8. Now that error has gone but I have a new error. In this particular case when I use psql to import data to database something new happens. Table gets created but without data. It says:
SET
SET
SET
SET
SET
SET
SET
SET
CREATE TABLE
ALTER TABLE
psql:tblNew.sql:39610: ERROR: value too long for type character(3)
CONTEXT: COPY words, line 1, column first_two_letters: "سر"
ALTER TABLE
ALTER TABLE
CREATE INDEX
CREATE INDEX
CREATE INDEX
CREATE INDEX
CREATE INDEX
CREATE INDEX
CREATE TRIGGER

Answer 1

I've tried to create a database with Encoding: UTF8 with a table and insert the two UTF-8 encoded characters the COPY command is trying to insert and it works when using INSERT.
CREATE DATABASE test
WITH OWNER = postgres
ENCODING = 'UTF8'
TABLESPACE = pg_default
LC_COLLATE = 'English_United States.1252'
LC_CTYPE = 'English_United States.1252'
CONNECTION LIMIT = -1;
CREATE TABLE x
(
first_two_letters character(3)
)
WITH (
OIDS=FALSE
);
ALTER TABLE x
OWNER TO postgres;
INSERT INTO x(
first_two_letters)
VALUES ('سر');
According to http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/ for the failing COPY the Unicode code points are:
U+0633 U+0631
which are two characters, which means you should be able to store them in a column defined as character(3), which stores strings up to 3 characters (not bytes) in length.
and if we try to INSERT, it succeeds:
INSERT INTO x(
first_two_letters)
VALUES (U&'\0633\0631');
From the pgdump documentation you can INSERT instead of COPY by using the --inserts option
--inserts
Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can
be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. However, since this option
generates a separate command for each row, an error in reloading a row
causes only that row to be lost rather than the entire table contents.
Note that the restore might fail altogether if you have rearranged
column order. The --column-inserts option is safe against column order
changes, though even slower.
Try to use this instead for Step 1:
pg_dump -U postgres -t OldSchema."TableToCopy" --inserts OldDatabase > Table.sql
I've also tried to COPY from a table to a file and use COPY to import and for me it works.
Are you sure your client and server database encoding is UTF8 ?
Firstly, export the table named "x" from schema "public" on database "test" to a plain text SQL file:
pg_dump -U postgres -t public."x" test > x.sql
which creates the x.sql file that contains:
--
-- PostgreSQL database dump
--
SET statement_timeout = 0;
SET lock_timeout = 0;
SET client_encoding = 'UTF8';
SET standard_conforming_strings = on;
SET check_function_bodies = false;
SET client_min_messages = warning;
SET search_path = public, pg_catalog;
SET default_tablespace = '';
SET default_with_oids = false;
--
-- Name: x; Type: TABLE; Schema: public; Owner: postgres; Tablespace:
--
CREATE TABLE x (
first_two_letters character(3)
);
ALTER TABLE public.x OWNER TO postgres;
--
-- Data for Name: x; Type: TABLE DATA; Schema: public; Owner: postgres
--
COPY x (first_two_letters) FROM stdin;
سر
\.
--
-- PostgreSQL database dump complete
--
Secondly, import with:
psql -U postgres -d test -f x.sql

Answer 2

The table name should be quoted , as the following
pg_dump -U postgres -t OldSchema."TableToCopy" OldDatabase | psql -U postgres -d NewDatabase
And I suggest you do the job in two steps
Step 1
pg_dump -U postgres -t OldSchema."TableToCopy" OldDatabase > Table.sql
If step 1 goes ok then do the step2.
Step 2
psql -U postgres -d NewDatabase -f Table.sql