<CTRL> + .

Sometimes the simplest tricks just ease your life the nice way.

While typing code in TOAD, I just found out those two handy keyboard shortcuts

<CTRL> + . = Autocompletes tablenames
<CTRL> + T = Popups the list of column names

I want to select everything from emp and dept joined on deptno.


SELECT*FROM E e,D d
where e.=d.

Especially useful when table and column is not EMP.DEPTNO but WWRTM_CUOTDSOTM_IWUWH_ML.H2OUUP2_NIAGASTSGM_IMUMTUCI 🙂

6 thoughts on “<CTRL> + .”

  1. Nigel Thomas

    I only discovered this recently, in spite of using TOAD on and off for the last 12 years.

    What I really like is that TOAD somehow learns the aliases you use, so if OL is your short name for ORDER_LINES, you should be able to type:

    SELECT OL.

    to get the list of columns for order_lines.

    I’ve never yet tried to reverse engineer the logic TOAD uses here; it could be learning from the statements it parses, or it could be guessing from the constraint definitions (eg Order_Lines has a PK called OL_PK, all foreign keys are OL_xxx_FK, etc). But the latter doesn’t seem to work all the time, so I think it must be the former.

    BTW if you pause after typing the period (eg OL.) and TOAD can guess what table you are referring to, you will get the list popped up without even pressing . This is controlled (I’m using 8.6.1) by View/Options/TOAD Insight then check “Display pick list after typing object name followed by a period”, and you can also set the pause time (1500ms by my default).

    I quite like SQL Developer, and use it on my own time, but as yet it can’t get anywhere near matching TOAD’s convenience (and speed).

    Regards Nigel

  2. Nicolas Gasparotto

    And how it is working if we have 20,000 tables, with 90% of tables started by PS ? Sometimes on GUI, there is help on writing to search the table name you are writing, it is “hanging” for a will to get the list of thousands table name… even if you know exactly the table name you want to query on
    🙂

  3. Laurent Schneider Post author

    Nigel, me neither, do not know the logic behind, when you create a fresh new table, it does not work immediately, maybe tables are loaded in memory. Also I cannot have table completion for tables in other schema.

    Nicolas, it seems the feature is much annoying in your case !

  4. Atul Gupta

    Hello, I’ve TOAD 9.7.2.5 but could not figure out the feature options View/Options/TOAD Insight then check “Display pick list after typing object name followed by a period”, after digging up i found option under View|Toad Options|Editor – Code Assist.

    Above is just FYI

    br
    atul

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