Improve .help in the sqlite3 CLI

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

The .help command in the sqlite3 CLI does not give much information. It only shows a brief message:

sqlite> .help
Enter SQL code and press enter.

It would be better if .help displayed a list of available commands, and .help <command> showed detailed help for that specific command.

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

This is a minor feature, which does not need previous discussion elsewhere

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

No response

Linked PRs

@erlend-aasland

We only need help for two commands, how about we hard-code it? I wrote a patch which can be seen below.

Subject: [PATCH] Expand help
---
Index: Lib/sqlite3/__main__.py
IDEA additional info:
Subsystem: com.intellij.openapi.diff.impl.patch.CharsetEP
<+>UTF-8
===================================================================
diff --git a/Lib/sqlite3/__main__.py b/Lib/sqlite3/__main__.py
--- a/Lib/sqlite3/__main__.py	(revision 0df15d0d4d55dcf7b7a7f4b2985bf84fd092d257)
+++ b/Lib/sqlite3/__main__.py	(date 1749219376897)
@@ -63,7 +63,10 @@
                 case "version":
                     print(f"{sqlite3.sqlite_version}")
                 case "help":
-                    print("Enter SQL code and press enter.")
+                    t = theme.syntax
+                    print(f"Enter SQL code or one of the below commands, and press enter.\n"
+                          f"{t.builtin}.version{t.reset}    Print the SQLite version\n"
+                          f"{t.builtin}.quit{t.reset}       Exit the CLI, equivalent to CTRL-D\n")
                 case "quit":
                     sys.exit(0)
                 case "":

What do you think @erlend-aasland of this approach?

SGTM, Stan.

gh-133934: Mention special commands in sqlite3 `.help` message (GH-13…

pythongh-133934: Mention special commands in sqlite3 `.help` message (p…

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Improve `.help` in the `sqlite3` CLI #133934

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Improve .help in the sqlite3 CLI #133934

Description

Feature or enhancement

Proposal:

Has this already been discussed elsewhere?

Links to previous discussion of this feature:

Linked PRs

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StanFromIreland commented on Jun 6, 2025

erlend-aasland commented on Jun 6, 2025

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Improve `.help` in the `sqlite3` CLI #133934