Hello I use the mysql command line tool quite often and always wondered why there's no feature that lets me quickly see the syntax of a "FOREIGN KEY" or "GRANT" command. Now while browsing the source I found the new "syntax" command in 4.0.12 and got the idea of implementing this syntax help of myself.
What do you think of a client command: mysql> syntax select; (or "\S" or "SHOW SYNTAX OF") SELECT [STRAIGHT_JOIN] [SQL_SMALL_RESULT] [SQL_BIG_RESULT] [SQL_BUFFER_RESULT] [SQL_CACHE | SQL_NO_CACHE] [SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS] [HIGH_PRIORITY] [DISTINCT | DISTINCTROW | ALL] select_expression,... [INTO {OUTFILE | DUMPFILE} 'file_name' export_options] [FROM table_references [WHERE where_definition] [GROUP BY {unsigned_integer | col_name | formula} [ASC | DESC], ...] [HAVING where_definition] [ORDER BY {unsigned_integer | col_name | formula} [ASC | DESC] ,...] [LIMIT [offset,] rows | rows OFFSET offset] [PROCEDURE procedure_name(argument_list)] [FOR UPDATE | LOCK IN SHARE MODE]] Reference: 6.4.1 http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/SELECT.html I managed to hacked a working demo in less than 10 minutes which is simply a copy of the syntax function and which uses syntax() to pipe the output of an arbitrary command back to mysql (of course it could be a C function, too, but why the unnecessary burden and having it as seperate program makes it useable standalone, too!) This program could be a perl program which either has syntax definitions hardcoded or, even better, is able to extract them from the docs. A preinstalled html documentation could be prerequisite which has two comments like "<!-- BEGIN SYNTAX: SELECT --> ... <!-- END SYNTAX --> so that the syntax is easily extractable. Something in the kind of cat /usr/share/doc/mysql/en/$1.html could be enough for the first start, too. The final stage would then be that this help command is called whenever on presses e.g. two times <tab> after writing a command like a command completition. Any suggestions and comments? bye, -christian- P.S.: Please CC me, I'm not subscribed. Thanks. -- The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]