misc psql questions

About a lifetime ago I used to do quite a bit of work w/ Oracle.

It's command line sql tool had some pretty nice features that I haven't
been able to find in psql. I was wondering if any of the following
existed....

I think the first was called break on which altered in output from
something like

name date qty
-------------------------
Fred 01-JAN-2000 10
Fred 10-JAN-2000 13
Fred 01-JUL-2000 1
Fred 01-DEC-2000 100
Bob 01-JAN-2000 5
Bob 10-MAY-2000 10

to

name date qty
-------------------------
Fred 01-JAN-2000 10
10-JAN-2000 13
01-JUL-2000 1
01-DEC-2000 100
Bob 01-JAN-2000 5
10-MAY-2000 10

it also allowed for things like compute sum which would activate on breaks
but I don't recall how they worked.

The other thing I'd love to be able to do is get user input while running
a sql file. I don't recall how this worked exactly but the script would
either accept variables calling the script or prompt for them.

So if I had a sql script in a file named contact_report. And I did

prod=> \i contact_report 01-JAN-2000 31-DEC-2001

then it would load the script and replace IIRC &1 and &2 with the
respective dates listed on command line.

It also had an ACCEPT command that would cause it to prompt for input from
user and assign to a varable name. like

accept amount prompt 'Enter the amount to search for: '
select * from foo where quantity = &amount

These made it very easy to build simple reports and scripts for less
technical end users.

Is any of this possible with psql?

Thanks,
James

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James Thompson 138 Cardwell Hall Manhattan, Ks 66506 785-532-0561
Kansas State University Department of Mathematics
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