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## pdx Interactive Mode

pdx has an interactive mode. This mode is very useful for testing function calls before you put them into report templates or diagram definitions. And you can execute short queries, for instance How many values are there in collection x? or What was the all time maximum? The interactive mode is started by the command line option -i. pdx shows a prompt and waits for input:
$ pdx -i
pdx 0.3.1 (2010-01-03 16:43:29 on castor, GNU/Linux 2.6.32-ARCH x86_64)
>
At this prompt there are two instructions, ? and q, every other input will be interpreted as function call.
The instruction ? lists implementions of built-in functions. Without any parameters ? shows all known built-in functions with their parameter types and their return type. ? accepts a regular expression which can be used to shrink the result:
> ?min show all implementions of the min-function
> ?a.* show all functions beginning with a
> ?m.. show functions beginning with m and having two more characters
The instruction q terminates the interactive mode and also pdx. This can also be achieved by Ctrl-D or Ctrl-C.
The call of a function shows the result immediately. A call like
> (select "*")
shows all actual values of the default collection.

pdx Reference | Index | Glossar