Editing Command-history facilities for Oracle/sqlplus user

{{TipImported
|id=41
|previous=40
|next=42
|created=March 8, 2001
|complexity=advanced
|author=vimer
|version=5.7
|rating=13/6
|category1=SQL
|category2=
}}
As Oracle users know, sqlplus has a very bad command-line editing environment with no command history.

Below is my Vim solution for sqlplus, to record the command history when you use edit (sqlplus builtin command) to open the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable. It saves the SQL statements into a standalone file such as .sqlplus.history.

Every time you open the file afiedt.buf (sqlplus's default command-buffer file), you get two split windows: the buffer above is afiedt.buf, the buffer below is .sqlplus.history, and you can see every SQL statement in the windows.

If you want to use SQL statement in line 5 to replace the current command-buffer, just press '''5K''', then ''':xa''' to go back to sqlplus. and use / to repeat the command saved in command-buffer file called afiedt.buf by default.

It can't process multi-line SQL statements conveniently. To do this, just use your favorite vim trick for that:

<pre>
fu! VimSQL()
  setf sql
  nnoremap <C-K> :<C-U>
  exe "let linenum=".v:count<CR>:1,$-1d<CR><C-W>j:exe lin
  enum."y"<CR><C-W>kP
  let linenum=line("$")
  1,$-1w! >> ~/.sqlplus.history
  e ~/.sqlplus.history
  execute ":$-".(linenum-1).",$m0"
  %!uniq
  if line("$")>100
    101,$d
  endif
  b#
  set splitbelow
  sp ~/.sqlplus.history
  au! BufEnter afiedt.buf
endf
au BufEnter afiedt.buf call VimSQL()
</pre>

==Setting your editor in Oracle==
If running Windows simply open up the SQLPlus command line and enter
<pre>define _editor</pre>
This will then tell you your current editor in order to set your new editor to vim simply enter
<pre>define _editor = gvim</pre>
Now when you use the built-in edit command it will open gVim instead of Notepad.

==Comments==
{{Todo}}
*Decide what author means by pressing '5K' and explain in tip.

The following map
<pre>
map ZZ :close<CR>:b afiedt.buf<CR>:xit<CR>
</pre>

will let the <tt>ZZ</tt> function close the second window and save the afiedt.buf file and then exit (if the user has no other dirty buffers).

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