A very long command can be broken down to multiple lines by giving \ at the end of the line. The default interactive prompt for a multi-line command is “> “. Let us change this default behavior to display “continue->” by using PS2 environment variable as shown below.
ramesh@dev-db ~> myisamchk --silent --force --fast --update-state \ > --key_buffer_size=512M --sort_buffer_size=512M \ > --read_buffer_size=4M --write_buffer_size=4M \ > /var/lib/mysql/bugs/*.MYI [Note: This uses the default ">" for continuation prompt] ramesh@dev-db ~> export PS2="continue-> " ramesh@dev-db ~> myisamchk --silent --force --fast --update-state \ continue-> --key_buffer_size=512M --sort_buffer_size=512M \ continue-> --read_buffer_size=4M --write_buffer_size=4M \ continue-> /var/lib/mysql/bugs/*.MYI [Note: This uses the modified "continue-> " for continuation prompt]
I found it very helpful and easy to read, when I break my long commands into multiple lines using \. I have also seen others who don’t like to break-up long commands.