pdx Interactive Mode
pdx has an interactive mode. This mode is very useful for testing
function calls before you put them into report templates
or diagram definitions. And you can execute short queries, for instance
How many values are there in collection
x? or What was the all
time maximum? The interactive mode is started by the command line
option -i. pdx shows a
prompt and waits for input:
$ pdx -i
pdx 0.3.1 (2010-01-03 16:43:29 on castor, GNU/Linux 2.6.32-ARCH x86_64)
>
At this prompt there are two instructions, ? and q, every other input will be
interpreted as function call.
The instruction ? lists
implementions of built-in functions.
Without
any
parameters
?
shows all known built-in functions with their parameter types and their
return type. ? accepts a
regular expression which can be used to shrink the result:
>
?min
show all implementions of the min-function
> ?a.* show all
functions beginning with a
> ?m.. show
functions beginning with m
and having two more characters
The instruction q
terminates the interactive mode and also pdx. This can also be achieved
by Ctrl-D
or Ctrl-C.
The call of a function shows the result immediately. A call like
>
(select
"*")
shows all actual values of the default collection.