createdb [ option... ] [ dbname ] [ description ]

createdb creates a new PostgreSQL database.

Normally, the database user who executes this command becomes the owner of the new database. However a different owner can be specified via the -O option, if the executing user has appropriate privileges.

createdb is a wrapper around the SQL command CREATE DATABASE [(7)]. There is no effective difference between creating databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

createdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be created. The name must be unique among all PostgreSQL databases in this cluster. The default is to create a database with the same name as the current system user.

description

Specifies a comment to be associated with the newly created database.

-D tablespace

--tablespace tablespace

Specifies the default tablespace for the database.

-e

--echo

Echo the commands that createdb generates and sends to the server.

-E encoding

--encoding encoding

Specifies the character encoding scheme to be used in this database. The character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in the documentation.

-O owner

--owner owner

Specifies the database user who will own the new database.

-q

--quiet

Do not display a response.

-T template

--template template

Specifies the template database from which to build this database.

The options -D, -E, -O, and -T correspond to options of the underlying SQL command CREATE DATABASE [(7)]; see there for more information about them.

createdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host

--host host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port

--port port

Specifies the TCP port or the local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username

--username username

User name to connect as

-W

--password

Force password prompt.

PGDATABASE

If set, the name of the database to create, unless overridden on the command line.

PGHOST

PGPORT

PGUSER

Default connection parameters. PGUSER also determines the name of the database to create, if it is not specified on the command line or by PGDATABASE.

In case of difficulty, see CREATE DATABASE [(7)] and psql(1) for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

To create the database demo using the default database server:

$ createdb demo
CREATE DATABASE

To create the database demo using the server on host eden, port 5000, using the LATIN1 encoding scheme with a look at the underlying command:

$ createdb -p 5000 -h eden -E LATIN1 -e demo
CREATE DATABASE "demo" WITH ENCODING = 'LATIN1'
CREATE DATABASE