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Tip 1092 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2005 · complexity intermediate · author John Kilbourne · version 6.0


Oracle's SQL*PLUS command line is very spare and simple, and an enjoyable challenge to use, but it does not keep a command history. VimTip41 addresses this, but I could not get that to work for various reasons. I made a solution that is complicated in some ways (it requires a one-liner .bat file and a one-liner .sql file in addition to an entry in vimrc), but for me it was simpler in that I could get it to work in my situation.

I wanted a log (sqlplus.log) file of my previous sql commands, stored in my %SQLPATH% where my login.sql and other Oracle scripts live. I wanted to see that file even after I quit from the afiedt.buf (the default file created by Oracle upon executing the "edit" command in SQL*PLUS). This is the aspect of VimTip41 that I could not get to work. Oracle requires that the process that creates that afiedt.buf return control back to Oracle (i.e. you must :wq from afiedit.buf). I would have liked a split window viewing both afiedit.buf and sqlplus.log, but have not been able to do that.

So I looked for a way to accomplish these three things:

  • Append the contents of afiedt.buf to a log file.
  • Keep the log file visible after :wq from afiedit.buf.
  • Pass the control back to Oracle properly so Oracle could see the contents of afiedt.buf.

While in SQL*PLUS, I enter

@edit

at the command prompt to access this one-liner file named edit.sql placed in %SQLPATH% (where Oracle could always find it):

--filename edit.sql
host runvim

Upon reading this file, SQL*PLUS executes the command "runvim" from a newly made shell. Here is the file runvim.bat, placed in my %PATH%:

:: filename runvim.bat
START /B gvim %SQLPATH%sqlplus.history

This starts gvim without making a console window, opening the file "sqlplus.history" in the path %SQLPATH%, an Oracle environment variable set previously .

I edit my SQL commands from sqlplus.history, and copy-paste them to SQL*PLUS when I am done making typos. Or, I can invoke the SQL*PLUS command "edit" (as opposed to my "@edit" invocation which calls the edit.sql file). The "edit" command creates the afiedt.buf file. I want to append the contents of afiedit.buf onto sqlplus.history. I added this little function to my vimrc to do that:

fu! Sqllog()
  1,$-1w! >> $SQLPATH/sqlplus.history
endf
au BufWrite afiedt.buf call Sqllog()

Also, I have this in my vimrc to ensure that Vim does not fork a new process; I believe it is necessary in using the builtin SQL*PLUS "edit" command:

set guioptions +=f "so gvim does not fork new process

To Do: I would prefer to append the contents of afied.buf after it is quit from, instead of after it is written to, but I am not sure how to do that now. Also, the split window between sqlplus.log and afiedt.buf would be nice to have.

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