psql: anyone ever notice?

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:

$ psql -?
psql: No match.

Odd --- I get the right thing:

$ psql -?
This is psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Usage:
psql [options] [dbname [username]]

Options:
-a Echo all input from script
-A Unaligned table output mode (-P format=unaligned)
[etc etc]

Something different about long-option handling on your platform, maybe?
What is your platform, anyway?

regards, tom lane

On Sun, 19 Nov 2000, Tom Lane wrote:

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:

$ psql -?
psql: No match.

Odd --- I get the right thing:

$ psql -?
This is psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

It has something to do with certain shell's expansion of ? - for the
longest time I'd have to do psql -\? to get it to work.

--
Dominic J. Eidson
"Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu!" - Gimli
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Vince Vielhaber writes:

$ psql -U
psql: option requires an argument -- U
Try -? for help.
$ psql -?
psql: No match.

Friggin' csh. Try 'psql -\?'.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://yi.org/peter-e/

It's a shell thing: Vince is running csh (or a derivative thereof)
while Tom (and I) are running some sort of Bourne derived shell.

Vince, try:

psql -\?

Which works more universally.

Ross

On Sun, Nov 19, 2000 at 02:44:01PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:

$ psql -?
psql: No match.

Odd --- I get the right thing:

$ psql -?
This is psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

--
Open source code is like a natural resource, it's the result of providing
food and sunshine to programmers, and then staying out of their way.
[...] [It] is not going away because it has utility for both the developers
and users independent of economic motivations. Jim Flynn, Sunnyvale, Calif.

all you guy unix?
under some shells, both * and ? are expanded to matched file names in current directory by shell,
for example FreeBSD's csh.

you should use psql -\? to get help screen, this sucks,
"?" shouldn't be used as a help screen argument.

Regards,
XuYifeng

----- Original Message -----
From: Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com>
To: <pgsql-hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 3:31 AM
Subject: [HACKERS] psql: anyone ever notice?

On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 10:47:32AM +0800, xuyifeng wrote:

"?" shouldn't be used as a help screen argument.

generally, code doesn't explicitly look for a '?'.

rather, the code notes that the character is not mapped to any argument,
and prints out a usage statement.

--
[ Jim Mercer jim@reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ]
[ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ]
[ Don't be fooled by cheap Finnish imitations; BSD is the One True Code. ]

"xuyifeng" <jamexu@telekbird.com.cn> writes:

you should use psql -\? to get help screen, this sucks,
"?" shouldn't be used as a help screen argument.

I tend to agree, given csh's unhelpful (ahem) behavior.

At the very least, it seems that "psql -h" ought to produce
the full help message, not just a complaint that the syntax
is wrong.

regards, tom lane

Vince Vielhaber writes:

$ psql -U
psql: option requires an argument -- U
Try -? for help.
$ psql -?
psql: No match.
$

It advertises '--help' now. (And yes, '--help' works everywhere.)

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net http://yi.org/peter-e/