Bug #31746 help command for help status could use clarification
Submitted: 22 Oct 2007 10:52 Modified: 26 Oct 2007 3:43
Reporter: Tobias Asplund Email Updates:
Status: Won't fix Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Server: Documentation Severity:S4 (Feature request)
Version:5.0/5.1 OS:Any
Assigned to: Paul DuBois CPU Architecture:Any

[22 Oct 2007 10:52] Tobias Asplund
Description:
mysql> help status;
Many help items for your request exist.
To make a more specific request, please type 'help <item>',
where <item> is one of the following
topics:
   SHOW
   SHOW ENGINE
   SHOW INNODB STATUS
   SHOW MASTER STATUS
   SHOW MUTEX STATUS
   SHOW PROCEDURE STATUS
   SHOW SLAVE STATUS
   SHOW STATUS
   SHOW TABLE STATUS

mysql> help show engine
Name: 'SHOW ENGINE'
Description:
Syntax:
SHOW ENGINE engine_name {LOGS | STATUS }

SHOW ENGINE displays log or status information about a storage engine.
The following statements currently are supported:

SHOW ENGINE BDB LOGS
SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS
SHOW ENGINE NDB STATUS
SHOW ENGINE NDBCLUSTER STATUS

URL: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/show-engine.html

mysql>

How to repeat:
mysql> show engine;
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the man
ual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax
to use near '' at line 1
mysql>

Suggested fix:
Since we have SHOW ENGINES as a command, and also since SHOW ENGINE ... ... needs more, it should be clarified with a { ... } or similar in this output, so that it's implied that we need some kind of mandatory value after show engine.
[22 Oct 2007 10:53] Tobias Asplund
Just saw that 

mysql> help show;
...
...
SHOW ENGINE engine_name {LOGS | STATUS }
...
...

This would probably work in the other place as well.
[22 Oct 2007 11:02] Stefan Hinz
I don't think adding an ellipsis (...) would be an improvement but I'll leave it to the assignee of this feature request to make or not make changes to the output of the help tables.
[22 Oct 2007 11:13] MySQL Verification Team
Thank you for the bug report.
[26 Oct 2007 3:43] Paul DuBois
Items listed as topics are just topics, not syntax descriptions. The output preceding the topics says:

To make a more specific request, please type 'help <item>',
where <item> is one of the following topics:

If the topics included other syntax, then to follow the instructions, you'd type in the syntax, and the resulting command would fail.