Getting help

The playground has help built in, so you rarely need to leave it.

help

Lists the supported commands, with the grammar reference and the type list.

help insert

help <command> shows detail for one command (every command sharing that entry word). Try help create, help add, help show, and so on.

help types

Shows the type reference on its own.

Hints — a deeper nudge

help is the reference; hint is the teaching nudge for what you are doing right now. A hint goes beyond the always-on colour and the ambient hint line: it explains what a command does, shows a worked example, and names the underlying relational concept.

F1 hints the command you're typing; after an error, the hint command explains it.

Press F1 while typing to get a hint for the command you are building:

Hint
  What:    Add one or more rows to a table.
  Example: insert into Customers values ('Ann', '[email protected]')
  Concept: A row is one record; each value lines up with a column, in order. Columns typed `serial`/`shortid` fill themselves — leave them out.

After a command fails, the hint command explains the most recent error — what went wrong, an example of the fix, and the concept behind it:

hint

A submitted command can’t see your half-typed line, which is why the live-input hint is on F1 while hint covers the last error. Both work in simple and advanced mode.

Outside the app, run rdbms-playground --help for the command-line options.