Take the 2-minute tour ×  I am trying to do the following:
UPDATE bodycontent set body=CONTENT_FROM_FILE where
contentid=12943363;  I tried the following based on the highest
voted answer to this question.  \set contentfill `cat Foo.txt`
UPDATE bodycontent set body=:'contentfill' where
contentid=12943363;  This results in the following error.
ERROR:  syntax error at or near ":"
LINE 1: UPDATE bodycontent set body=:'contentfill' where
contentid=1...                Is there a clean, simple and
effective way to achieve this on the psql command line?  Here is
the output of psql --version:  psql (PostgreSQL) 8.4.17
share|improve this question Postgres' version? –  Milen A. Radev
Apr 24 at 3:57 @MilenA.Radev, Updated with version. – 
merlin2011 Apr 24 at 3:59  1 Answer 1  After much searching, I
discovered this answer, which does not directly discuss the
problem of reading files, but gave me the necessary ingredient
to make this work for my ancient Postgres.  \se