q) vs. q)) prompt

Community Support
1

Hi,

I’m just starting out in q, and I’m trying to figure out what’s happening when I get the prompt q)) rather than q). I’m looking at kdb for mortals and playing around using its commands to build a sample database, and by accident I typed get :cust rather than get :cust/ (cust is a splayed table). That obviously did something, but definitely not what I expected, and now the prompt I get is q) rather than q)), and the responses I get when I enter commands are very cryptic. Can anyone explain what’s actually happening here?

Thanks

2

if you hit an error in your program, it suspends execution and awaits input at the console.
It prints an additional ) to show the level of nesting in this suspended mode.

The cryptic info printed at that stage is the (function body;error;operator;args) that caused the suspension.

e.g.

q)f:{x+y}

q)f[1;`a]

{x+y}

'type

1

`a

q))x / inspect x

1

q))y / inspect y

`a

q)):

q)

See debugging section at http://code.kx.com/wiki/JB:QforMortals/execution_control

thanks

3

Ah I see- thanks!