About this site
This site is the official documentation for kdb+ and the q programming language.
It reflects the work of the KX community since 1993, has many authors, and continues to evolve.
This site is a project of the KX Librarian: librarian@kx.com.
A librarian’s job is to put information where people can find it.
Search
The Search Box on this site is customized for the q language. Some examples:
Operator glyphs $ ^ . <> /: ':
and their names dollar bang at
Operator names Drop roll Enum Extend
Keywords xbar like ajf0 uj
Namespace objects .z.pd .Q.dpfts
System commands \d \ts \_ \\
Command-line options -b -p
Internal functions -11!
Popular queries types datatypes
Queries not matched by the Search Box are handled by Google Search.
Install man.q
to open the Reference direct from the q session.
GitHub
Truncated GitHub URLs are prefixed with the GitHub icon and omit the https://github.com/
prefix.
For example, read KxSystems/kdb
as https://github.com/KxSystems/kdb
.
Contribute
A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.
— John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing”, 1949
The repository for this site is KxSystems/docs. The contribution model is GitHub and Forking Workflow. To contribute, submit a pull request.
The repo includes a style guide for contributors.
We gratefully acknowledge pull requests from
Alexander Belopolsky James Hanna
Aleks Bunin kylenarocroc
Angus Wilson Sean Keevey
Andrew in New York Sean O’Hagan
Chris Shucksmith Rian O’Cuinneagain
Cillian Reilly Rikesh
Conor McCarthy Thomas Smyth
David Z. Han Sergey Vidyuk
Esperanza Lopez Aguilera Simon Shanks
Geo Carncross William Da Silva
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Images
This site includes images for which KX holds neither copyright nor permission. These images serve as links to their original sites. We understand this to be fair use.
If you are a copyright holder and object to this use, please write to librarian@kx.com.
Terminology
In 2018 and 2019 we made changes to the terminology used to describe the q language.
Citations
How to cite the q programming language:
Bibtex format
@misc{OMS,
author= {{Kx Systems, Inc.}},
year = {2020},
title = {Documentation for kdb+ and q},
note = {\url{https://code.kx.com/q/ref/},
Last accessed on 2020-04-15},
}
- Chicago style
-
“Reference Card.” Documentation for kdb and q . Kx Systems, Inc. Accessed April 15, 2020. https://code.kx.com/q/ref/.
- Harvard style
-
Documentation for kdb+ and q. 2020. Reference Card. [online] Available at: https://code.kx.com/q/ref/ [Accessed 15 April 2020].
- Vancouver style
-
Reference Card [Internet]. Documentation for kdb and q. Kx Systems, Inc.; 2020 [cited 2020Apr15]. Available from: https://code.kx.com/q/ref/
Citation Machine for other citation styles
Wiki
The KX wiki was the primary documentation for q and kdb+ until January 2017.
The content, which runs on Mediawiki, has been archived on GitHub.