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Getting started with PeachQ

Open Try Live to use PeachQ in your browser, or download PeachQ and start the q executable in a terminal. The terminal shows a q) prompt; type expressions after it. Do not include the prompt when copying code.

Evaluate an expression

q)sum 2 3 4
9

The result is 9. Spaces separate the items of a list. Many q operations work on whole lists, so you can express a calculation without a loop.

Create and query a table

This example includes its own setup and can be pasted into a fresh session.

trades:([]sym:`IBM`MSFT`IBM;price:100 200 110;size:10 5 20)
select sum size by sym from trades

The result has one row per symbol: IBM has total size 30, and MSFT has total size 5. See qSQL for the language and table display for how PeachQ presents it.

Load the bundled standard library

In a native PeachQ session, enter \l pq to load the bundled library. Feature guides state their prerequisites; DuckDB and FFI also depend on native libraries. Browser builds have different capabilities, so use the native executable for those guides.

Start with loading data, then CSV, JSON or Parquet. The DuckDB distribution bundles dependencies for the DuckDB path; check the download page for platform packages. PeachQ’s DuckDB integration is experimental; review the feature-specific limitations before adopting it.

Bring existing q code

Read compatibility and migration before moving an application. In particular, recognised file suffixes change get and set behaviour, and storage support differs. Use the command-line guide when choosing launch flags.