PSQL trying to connect to wrong database

I have noticed recently a weird (at least to me) behaviour of psql when trying to run psql -l. The essential steps to reproduce it are:

• Create a sample DB (I did it with docker and created a simple role with a password)

-
Export environment variables that are used by psql

PGPASSWORD=password
PGDATABASE=database
PGUSER=username

-
Edit the pg_hba.conf. And instead of having the default for local I replaced it with. Of course don't forget about reloading the configuration.

local   database          username                                  trust

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Running psql works as expected but running psql -l results in

psql: FATAL:  no pg_hba.conf entry for host "[local]", user "username", database "database", SSL off

This seems to not take the environment variables into account when making a connection to the database.

This is expected behaviour.

The man page for psql says (emphasis mine):


-l


--list


List all available databases, then exit. Other non-connection options are ignored. This is similar to the meta-command \list.


When this option is used, psql will connect to the database postgres,
unless a different database is named on the command line (option -d or
non-option argument, possibly via a service entry, but not via an
environment variable).

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#207709, answer score: 2