Real newbie question.

"William D. Tallman" <wtallman@olypen.com> writes:

When I am entering values into a table, and make a mistake, sometimes
there is an error message, and sometimes the equal sign in the prompt
becomes a single quote. Error messages I can puzzle out, but I have not
discovered how to recover from the single quote in the prompt. I wind up
having to kill the terminal and start all over

Can someone point me to the explanation of this?

The single quote in the prompt means that you've type an unclosed
single quote.

-Doug
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We will return to our regularly scheduled signature shortly.

When the prompt changes from an equals sign to a single dash, it means
you have not finished an SQL statement, pgsql is waiting for a semicolon.
A single quote can mean that you didn't close your single quotation, for
example:

UPDATE foo SET column = 'Thursday

If you press return here, psql will be waiting for you to close the
quotation.

Hope this helps.

On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, William D. Tallman wrote:

Hi Bill,

Have you solved this yet?

When the psql prompt becomes a ' it means you've started a text string
and not ended it. i.e. :

psql# INSERT INTO foo (stringfield) VALUES ('blah blah blah);
psql'#

You need to type another ' then press enter to finish the string. Once
on a new line, type \r to clear the buffer of the command you stuffed,
or \e to open up a window which edits it. i.e. :

psql# INSERT INTO foo (stringfield) VALUES ('blah blah blah);
psql'# safdsadfa
psql'# <Uh oh.. something wrong>
psql'# Aha...
psql'# '
psql# \r
Query buffer reset.
psql# INSERT INTO foo (stringfield) VALUES ('blah blah blah');

:-)

Hope that's helpful, did it from memory, so the exact output may look
slightly different.

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

"William D. Tallman" wrote:

Just started fiddling with PostgreSQL, and know nothing of databases.

I have the documentation that came with the Mandrake-8.0 installation
written by Thomas Lockhard, and I've perused Bruce Momjian's book online,
and I cannot find the answer to this problem:

When I am entering values into a table, and make a mistake, sometimes
there is an error message, and sometimes the equal sign in the prompt
becomes a single quote. Error messages I can puzzle out, but I have not
discovered how to recover from the single quote in the prompt. I wind up
having to kill the terminal and start all over

Can someone point me to the explanation of this?

Thanks, and I hope this question isn't too rudimentary for this NG.

Bill Tallman

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On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, William D. Tallman wrote:

Just started fiddling with PostgreSQL, and know nothing of databases.

I have the documentation that came with the Mandrake-8.0 installation
written by Thomas Lockhard, and I've perused Bruce Momjian's book online,
and I cannot find the answer to this problem:

When I am entering values into a table, and make a mistake, sometimes
there is an error message, and sometimes the equal sign in the prompt
becomes a single quote. Error messages I can puzzle out, but I have not
discovered how to recover from the single quote in the prompt. I wind up
having to kill the terminal and start all over

Can someone point me to the explanation of this?

It probably means you have mismatched single quotes which means it
thinks you're in a string constant. '; should generally get you an
error and back to a normal prompt I think (close the constant and
statement)

"William D. Tallman" wrote:

When I am entering values into a table, and make a mistake, sometimes
there is an error message, and sometimes the equal sign in the prompt
becomes a single quote. Error messages I can puzzle out, but I have not
discovered how to recover from the single quote in the prompt. I wind up
having to kill the terminal and start all over

Can someone point me to the explanation of this?

It simply means that you have typed a starting single quote but have
not yet typed the closing quote. You can get a similar effect with
parentheses.

Close the quote, then use \r to clear the buffer.

Example:
junk=# select 'x
junk'# ',*
junk-# from (
junk(# select * from a
junk(# ) as ss
junk-# ;
ERROR: Relation 'a' does not exist

junk=# select '
junk'# aga
junk'# dsfhsh
junk'# \r
junk'# '
junk-# \r
Query buffer reset (cleared).
junk=#

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