Documentation Source Text

<p>Parameters can be either named or unnamed.  An unnamed parameter is a single
question mark ("?").  Named parameters are a "?" followed immediately by a number
(ex: "?15" or "?123") or one of the characters "$", ":", or "@" followed by an
alphanumeric name (ex: "$var1", ":xyz", "@bingo").

<p>This command-line shell leaves unnamed parameters unbound, meaning that they
will have a value of an SQL NULL, but named parameters might be assigned values.
If there exists a TEMP table named "$Parameters" with a schema like this:

<codeblock>
CREATE TEMP TABLE "$Parameters"(
  key TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  value ANY
) WITHOUT ROWID;
</codeblock>

<p>And if there is a entry in that table where the key column exactly matches
the name of parameter (including the initial "?", "$", ":", or "@" character)
then the parameter is assigned the value of the value column.  If no entry exists,
the parameter defaults to NULL.

<p>The ".parameter" command exists to simplify managing this table.  The
".parameter init" command (often abbreviated as just ".param init") creates
the temp."$Parameters" table if it does not already exist.  The ".param list"
command shows all entries in the temp."$Parameters" table.  The ".param clear"
command drops the temp."$Parameters" table.  The ".param set KEY VALUE" and
".param unset KEY" commands create or delete entries from the 
temp."$Parameters" table.










<tcl>hd_fragment expert {.expert command}</tcl>
<h1>Index Recommendations (SQLite Expert)</h1>

<p><b>Note: This command is experimental. It may be removed or the 
interface modified in incompatible ways at some point in the future.

<p>Parameters can be either named or unnamed.  An unnamed parameter is a single
question mark ("?").  Named parameters are a "?" followed immediately by a number
(ex: "?15" or "?123") or one of the characters "$", ":", or "@" followed by an
alphanumeric name (ex: "$var1", ":xyz", "@bingo").

<p>This command-line shell leaves unnamed parameters unbound, meaning that they
will have a value of an SQL NULL, but named parameters might be assigned values.
If there exists a TEMP table named "sqlite_parameters" with a schema like this:

<codeblock>
CREATE TEMP TABLE sqlite_parameters(
  key TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  value ANY
) WITHOUT ROWID;
</codeblock>

<p>And if there is a entry in that table where the key column exactly matches
the name of parameter (including the initial "?", "$", ":", or "@" character)
then the parameter is assigned the value of the value column.  If no entry exists,
the parameter defaults to NULL.

<p>The ".parameter" command exists to simplify managing this table.  The
".parameter init" command (often abbreviated as just ".param init") creates
the temp.sqlite_parameters table if it does not already exist.  The ".param list"
command shows all entries in the temp.sqlite_parameters table.  The ".param clear"
command drops the temp.sqlite_parameters table.  The ".param set KEY VALUE" and
".param unset KEY" commands create or delete entries from the 
temp.sqlite_parameters table.

<p>The temp.sqlite_parameters table only provides values for parameters in the
command-line shell.  The temp.sqlite_parameter table has no affect on queries
that are run directly using the SQLite C-language API.  Individual applications
are expected to implement their own parameter binding.  You can search for 
"sqlite_parameters" in the 
[https://sqlite.org/src/file/src/shell.c.in|command-line shell source code]
to see how the command-line shell does parameter binding, and use that as
a hint for how to implement it yourself.

<tcl>hd_fragment expert {.expert command}</tcl>
<h1>Index Recommendations (SQLite Expert)</h1>

<p><b>Note: This command is experimental. It may be removed or the 
interface modified in incompatible ways at some point in the future.