Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

":Help" command not working

Open
#813 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
65/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
go
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start by reproducing the documented :help example in the interactive sqlcmd CLI, then trace how colon commands are parsed and dispatched in the Go implementation. Done means :help and :Help are handled as sqlcmd commands and no longer sent to SQL Server as invalid syntax.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Description

The ":Help" command is documented, but it doesn't seem like it's working in the go version of sqlcmd.

Example

❯ sqlcmd
1> :help
2> go
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Server 714f0c28a9f0, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near ':'.
1> :Help
2> go
Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Server 714f0c28a9f0, Line 1
Incorrect syntax near ':'.
1> 

sqlcmd version

❯ sqlcmd --version
sqlcmd: Install/Create/Query SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Tools

Version: 1.10.0

Legal docs and information: aka.ms/SqlcmdLegal
Third party notices: aka.ms/SqlcmdNotices
Dominant language
Go
Stars
595
Forks
91
Avg merge
9h 35m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoft/go-sqlcmd

All issues in microsoft/go-sqlcmd

Similar issues

More Go issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.