Bug #4862 'help' topics sometimes contain only one syntax for a command
Submitted: 3 Aug 2004 1:24 Modified: 25 Aug 2004 20:19
Reporter: Harrison Fisk Email Updates:
Status: Won't fix Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Server Severity:S3 (Non-critical)
Version:4.1.3b OS:MacOS (Mac OS X.2)
Assigned to: Paul DuBois CPU Architecture:Any

[3 Aug 2004 1:24] Harrison Fisk
Description:
When using the interactive 'help' command in the mysql client, the help output quite often will contain only one syntax for a command or sometimes a very short example.   I have noticed this for DELETE, UPDATE (both don't show multi-table update), and CREATE TABLE (very short example output, no options at all!)

'help' should include all of the different formats or options for the command, otherwise you still need to come to the online manual to find them out.  

I am making this a docs bug, since the codes for the help topic examples are in the documentation itself.  Feel free to assign it elsewhere if a better place exists.

Example:
mysql> help create table
...
Examples:
CREATE [TEMPORARY] TABLE [IF NOT EXISTS] tbl_name
    [(create_definition,...)]
    [table_options] [select_statement]

Notice it doesn't list any of the table_options at all, which isn't very handy.

mysql> help delete
...
Examples:
DELETE [LOW_PRIORITY] [QUICK] [IGNORE] FROM tbl_name
       [WHERE where_definition]
       [ORDER BY ...]
       [LIMIT row_count]

Left out alternate syntax for command with multi-table update.

How to repeat:
mysql> help delete
mysql> help update
mysql> help create table

Suggested fix:
Update the manual.texi to have more useful information for the help nodes that have multiple entries.
[25 Aug 2004 20:19] Peter Gulutzan
We will not be changing manual.texi because henceforth our format will be DocBook. This 
request is now in MySQL's worklog as a "raw idea" task for further client development.