Re: psql: recall previous command?

One interesting artifact of using \e to edit a multi-line command is 
that the same command is then treated as a single-line command in 
subsequent up-arrow or Ctrl-P attempts.

I use this frequently to achieve a similar effect to what you're after. 
The one downside is that if you leave the psql session, it's returned 
to multi-line format in the psql history.

-tfo

--
Thomas F. O'Connell
Co-Founder, Information Architect
Sitening, LLC
http://www.sitening.com/
110 30th Avenue North, Suite 6
Nashville, TN 37203-6320
615-260-0005d

On Feb 21, 2005, at 10:26 PM, Neil Conway wrote:

> Is there a way to recall the previous command in psql? Obviously, "up 
> arrow" or Ctrl-P using readline and the default readline bindings is 
> close, but it recalls the previous _line_ of input. That is not at all 
> the same thing in the case of a multiple line command, for example.
>
> If there is no way at present, I think there should be. Using "up 
> arrow"
> is quite annoying when dealing with multiple line SQL statements.
>
> Two issues:
>
> - how to handle slash commands? Slash commands and SQL statements can 
> be intermixed:
>
> neilc=# select 1 \timing
> Timing is off.
> neilc-# ;
>  ?column?
> ----------
>         1
> (1 row)
>
> So I'm not quite sure what the right behavior here is. We could always 
> just ignore slash commands (the command would "recall the previous SQL 
> statement") -- since few slash commands are multi-line, I don't think 
> that would be too bad.
>
> - when a multiple-line command is recalled, how should it be presented 
> in the psql input buffer? Perhaps we could strip newlines from 
> recalled command text, so that the recalled command would fit on a 
> single line. That would mean the recalled command would look somewhat 
> different than how the user typed it, although of course the semantics 
> of the query should be the same. Any better ideas?
>
> -Neil
>
>
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