$EDITOR for SQL/PRQL commands

[Mr-Andersen]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

My PRQL expression got really big. It would be much nicer to write it in a more capable editor. Also, that would make it easier to save the expression elsewhere --- currently, this is tedious process of copying the expression in chunks.

Describe the solution you'd like
A shortcut to open current expression in $EDITOR? E.g. I press ;, then I press Ctrl+; (or whatever), and $EDITOR replaces lnav. On exit, whatever I've left in editor is used as new expression.

[tstack]

See #1380

Right now, just the :comment command is wired up to use the multi-line prompt. I'll be doing the same for SQL/PRQL soon.

[tstack]

The top-of-tree should be usable with the new prompt if you want to give it a try. Here's a screencap of it in action:

lnav-multiline-prql.mp4

In the prompt, you can press CTRL+L to switch the prompt to multi-line mode and reformat the query. In multi-line mode, press CTRL+X to run the query.

[tstack]

Also, that would make it easier to save the expression elsewhere

I've tried to address this in two ways:

• you can highlight the text with the mouse now (or shift-arrow-key) and then press CTRL+K to cut the text to the clipboard (pressing CTRL+Y will paste from the clipboard to restore it);
• pressing CTRL+O will save contents of the prompt to the lnav config directory under "formats/installed/saved-prompt.lnav" and try to open that file with VSCode (or the macOS default text editor). The prompt will close after this, but you can just run |saved-prompt to execute the prompt as you change it in the editor. VSCode is the default since there is an lnav extension for it.

I think the changes so far pretty much cover what is mentioned in this request. So, I'll close it soon, unless you have some other thoughts. Thanks.

[Mr-Andersen]

This is great, thank you