Enough with AFIEDT.BUF

You are in SQL*Plus. You entered a command and urgh, there was a typo. No worries, you bring up the command in an editor by typing:

SQL> ed

This opens up an editor, such as notepad.exe in Windows or vi in Unix, etc. And it puts the last SQL you entered in a file, oddly named, afiedt.buf. You don't like it and you want a name easier to type. Is it possible? Of course.

History of Afiedt.Buf

First a little bit of background information on the odd name. SQL*Plus as a tool evolved from another tool Oracle provided a long, long time ago, called--rather uncreatively--User Friendly Interface, or UFI. When the editor wanted to bring up a file for editing, the file had to be given a name unique enough so as not to conflict with anything else. Therefore the file was named ufiedt.buf, which roughly indicated UFI Editor Buffer.

Later as UFI was added new features, it was called Advanced UFI (well, "advanced" is relative). To keep pace, the generated file was called Advanced UFI Editor Buffer, or aufiedt.buf. However an operating system that Oracle supported couldn't handle a 7 character file name before the period before suffix. Therefore the name was shortened to afiedt.buf to keep it distinct from ufiedt.buf (which presumably was not as "advanced"). As the advancements in technology came, Oracle didn't bother to change it and the name stuck. Long live afiedt.buf!

Why Change It?

If ain't broken, don't fix it. Shouldn't that be the case? The name doesn't break anything; so why change it? There are three reasons to at least consider.

1. The name may difficult to type.
2. he extension of ".buf" is not automatically recognized by SQL*Plus as a SQL script.
3. The file is created in the present directory. Suppose you are in a directory you don't have permission on, e.g. "/etc" in Unix or \Windows in Windows, you can't just bring up the editor as you won't have the permissions to create the file there. You will get this error:

• What do you do? Exit from SQL*Plus, change to a proper directory and re-execute this command? Then you would lose all the settings you may have done in that session. So you would want to create the file in a location of your choosing.

How can I Change It?

It's ridiculously simple to change the file. A setting in SQL*Plus controls it.

SQL> set editfile arup.sql

After this when you type the editor command:

SQL> ed
Wrote file arup.sql

Look how the file created was named "arup.sql"; not afiedt.buf. Of course you can use any name as you find appropriate.

Changing Directory

Let's handle the second problem. You are in a directory where you don't have write permission and you want to edit the command. Well, you can use a full path to the file as well.

SQL> set editfile c:\temp\arup.sql
SQL> ed
Wrote file c:\temp\arup.sql

The file is created in the C:\temp directory instead of the default option of the current directory.

Changing the Editor

While on the subject, do you know that you can change the default editor as well? For instance, if you are on Windows, you don't have to have Notepad as the editor for SQL scripts. It can be notepad++, or, as I prefer, "vim", which is enhanced vi. In Unix, the default is not vi; it's "ed" and you may want to change it. How to do that?

Very simple; another setting _EDITOR allows us to do that. It's a variable; so you have to use DEFINE command. Use the following:

SQL> define _editor = vi

That's it; now when you enter "ed" command, it will bring up vi editor. Change to whatever you want to set.

Tips for Practical Uses

If you want to change the default editor and the default file for editing, put the commands in the glogin.sql file, which ensures their automatic execution when someone invokes SQL*Plus.

Afiedt.Buf is dead. Long live Afedit.Buf. Or, was it Afiedt.Buf? Oh, who cares?