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Comment by keithy | Hacker News Reader

The backslash commands are way better than having to type out SHOW TABLES; or SHOW DATABASES;, or CONNECT DATABASE X. All I have to do is \dt or \c x. It's so much better. Can't remember them? Just do \?.

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That's also the problem I have, \dt,\c just don't make sense at all and I never remember them whereas 'SHOW TABLES' does not even need explanations. It's also the same thing with the unix users, I never fully understood how postgres handles user permissions. I would say that Postgres itself is really really good but the tooling around is just not there yet.

I just remembered it as \d as display and \dt as display tables.

I often invent mnemonics that only mean something to me until muscle memory kicks in.

Here's a nice one-page cheat sheet, of which about 75% you will probably never need to use: http://www.postgresonline.com/downloads/special_feature/post...

Thats excellent, thanks :).

Thats like trying to say emacs is easier than eclipse. Sure it may be more efficient once you are used to it, but its not more intuitive.

eclipse and intuitive shouldn't ever be used in the same sentence. emacs ditto, but calling one more intuitive from another is missing the point by about 1 AU.

Eclipse isn't great in that respect, but choosing something from a menu is definitely more intuitive than remembering the cryptic commands in emacs.

"The only intuitive interface is the nipple, after that it's all learned." - Bruce Ediger

Sure but a menu is still more intuitive than C-c.

(I even had to check the fact that C- is the ctrl key when looking up this command. I noticed commands listed as M-w - I have no idea what keys that represents).

M is short for Meta, and usually means "Alt".

\? is killer.

Thanks a ton, I didn't know that yet. I also find MySQL cli very easy to work. But that's going to change now, it seems.

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