Editor

Introduction

One of the most useful mycli commands is /edit or \edit. This can be used to launch an editor to edit the current query (or previous query, if the current line is otherwise blank).

When used at the end-of-line, we must use the alternate backslash form \edit to avoid ambiguity with valid SQL.

Examples

# /edit alone will launch the default editor (read from the $EDITOR or $VISUAL
# environment variables).  It will put the _previous_ query in the editor,
# and the query will be populated back into the prompt once the edit session
# is exited.
mysql> /edit

# \edit at end-of-line will open the editor with the query-so-far in the editor.
mysql> SELECT * FROM \edit

# /edit followed by an argument refers to a file.  This will open an existing
# file in the editor.
> /edit <filename>

Setup

Mycli reads the choice of editor from the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variable, which the user must set, usually in ~/.bash_profile.

Example: if VS Code is installed, and its CLI tool code is on your $PATH, then this will allow editing mycli queries in VS Code with /edit:

export VISUAL='code --wait'