"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes: A psql novice is unlikely to be familiar with that concept, let alone know that \r or ^C is the way to get there. There's a weak argument that "help" is of some value because it's likely to be the first thing a novice types, but that doesn't apply for quit/exit. The typical interaction I'd foresee is more like
with nothing accomplished except to increase the user's frustration each time. Eventually she'll hit on ^D and get out of it, but none of these allegedly novice-friendly "features" helped at all.
help -> exit -> (they may think of "quit" ...)
My major CLI experience is bash and for this I use "exit", and in Windows you go to "File -> Exit". Quit makes sense but exit is more common. I'm inclined to buy into this proposal for that reason alone. The usage problem you demonstrate is only somewhat valid since the level of frustration depends on whether they are just tying commands or know from the docs that "quit" is supposed to work. And even backslash commands won't work if you leaving the session in the middle of text literal. So, I'll agree but all of the mitigation above means I don't think this proposal makes the situation much (if at all) worse if they aren't reading the docs and can be lessened if they are.
