CLI Reference¶

pgfmt provides a command-line interface for formatting SQL files or stdin.

Usage¶

pgfmt [--style STYLE] [--check] [files ...]

Arguments¶

`files`¶

One or more SQL files to format. If no files are given, pgfmt reads from stdin.

# Format a single file
pgfmt query.sql

# Format multiple files
pgfmt schema.sql queries.sql

# Format from stdin
echo "SELECT a,b FROM t" | pgfmt

# Pipe from another command
pg_dump mydb | pgfmt --style mozilla > formatted.sql

`--style`¶

Choose a formatting style. Default is river.

Available styles: river, mozilla, aweber, dbt, gitlab, kickstarter, mattmc3

pgfmt --style dbt query.sql
pgfmt --style mozilla query.sql
pgfmt --style mattmc3 query.sql

`--check`¶

Check if files are already formatted without modifying them. Exits with code 1 if any file would be reformatted, 0 if all files are already formatted. Useful in CI pipelines.

# Check formatting in CI
pgfmt --check --style dbt models/*.sql

# Use in a pre-commit hook or Makefile
pgfmt --check query.sql || echo "Needs formatting"

Exit Codes¶

Code	Meaning
0	Success (or all files already formatted with `--check`)
1	Files would be reformatted (`--check` mode)

Examples¶

Format a file in place¶

pgfmt writes to stdout, so use shell redirection or sponge to format in place:

# Using a temp file
pgfmt query.sql > query.formatted.sql && mv query.formatted.sql query.sql

# Using sponge (from moreutils)
pgfmt query.sql | sponge query.sql

Multi-statement files¶

pgfmt handles files with multiple semicolon-delimited statements:

pgfmt schema.sql

Each statement is formatted independently and separated by a blank line.

Unsupported statements¶

Statements without a dedicated formatter (e.g., ALTER TABLE, GRANT, CREATE INDEX) pass through with normalized whitespace.