psql Week 1

Here's the summary of my wheelings and dealings. No code yet, but trust
me, you don't want it.

* Changed one file into many
* Changed few functions into countless
* Added GNU long option support (added test to configure.in,
definition to config.h.in)
[ This feature is under protest by Tom L. ]
* Extra arguments are now taken as dbname and username
(it used to fail if you have more than one extra)
* Added switch -V (--version) to display client and server version and
warn about possible incompatibilities
* Added \copyright command. Changed welcome message accordingly.
* Added a few long slash commands equivalent to short ones (e.g.,
\list = \l)
* Rewrote backslash command parser from scratch. Can now quote
arguments. (Only doublequotes. Single quotes to come.)
* Added message output channel as alternative to query output and
stderr. Might be useful to funnel output in scripts.
* SQL command help is now generated directly from the SGML sources at
build time.
[ Must have perl. Might be a problem on Windows. Perhaps package
preparsed version as well. ]
* \connect now asks for password when appropriate
* Added switch -U allowing you to specify username on cmd line
* -? prints out default username, host, port, etc. in help screen
* PSQLRC env variable can override the name of your startup script
* PSQL_EDITOR can set your prefered editor for \e and \E (overriding
EDITOR and VISUAL)
* Fixed flat tire on bike ...
* when \connect fails, it now keeps the previous connection (formerly
aborted program)
* Custom prompts in tcsh style
(No, I am not partial to tcsh. In fact, I don't even use it. But
using % as escape character rather than \ saves a lot of headaches.)
* Increased abstraction of input routines.
[ Cheers to Matthew D.! ]
* Started to clean up \copy. Can now specify delimiters and "with
oids". Still needs some work though, especially regarding binary and
quoting/escaping. I'll probably end up writing a better strtok()
before this is all over.

More in a week . . .

--
Peter Eisentraut - peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net
http://yi.org/peter-e