Oracle rlwrap tips

Question:  I’ve been told that I need to use the rlwrap utility with SQL*Plus.  What is rlwrap and how does it help me in SQL*Plus?

Answer:  One nice features of using SQL*Plus in Windows is that you can use the “up arrow” and down arrow” keys to display the command line history for all SQL*Plus commands.

It's also possible to do this in Linux and UNIX (AIX, Solaris, HP/UX) with the freeware rlwrap utility.

You can download the freeware rlwrap utility at this link.

The readline wrapper (rlwrap) utility uses the GNU readline library.  Hence, rlwrap is not Oracle-centric, it’s a standard OS utility available for all flavors of UNIX, Linux and even Windows.  The rlwrap software installs easily on UNIX/Linux with these standard GNU unzip and make commands:

gunzip rlwrap*.gz
tar -xvf rlwrap*.tar
cd rlwrap*
./configure
make
make check
make install

Aliasing rlwrap

Following the install, you use a standard UNIX alias in your shell signon file (.cshrc for S shell, .bashrc for Bourne shell, or .profile for Korn shell) to source-in the rlwrap utility, using a different command name:

alias rl_sqlplus='rlwrap sqlplus'
alias rl_rman='rlwrap rman'
alias rl_asmcmd='rlwrap asmcmd'

Using rlwrap may affect the behavior of CTRL+C during interactive sessions. I've done a few tests on this and I can't see a difference in behavior of CTRL+C with or without rlwrap. Perhaps this was a problem with earlier versions.  Note that rlwrap only supports interactive sessions, so scripts like the following may not work as expected.

sqlplus alias:  From what I can see the alias doesn't seem to work from within a shell script (bash, ksh or csh), so it doesn't really present a danger. Remember, rlwrap is not an Oracle tool! I guess it's best to leave the sqlplus and rman commands clean and alias using a different name, just in case.

Using rlwrap

The rlwrap utility is a nice utility for command-line editing and an easy display of SQL*Plus command history.

Rampant author Kamran Agayev Agamehdi shows how to install and use rlwrap on Linux:

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