How to best display in Terminal a MySQL SELECT returning too many fields?

user_114140 0
Viewed 270734

I'm using PuTTY to run:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable;

sometable has many fields and this results in many columns trying to be displayed in the terminal. The fields wrap onto the next line so it is very hard to line up column titles with field values.

What solutions are there for viewing such data in terminal?

I don't have nor want access to phpMyAdmin - or any other GUI interfaces. I'm looking for command-line solutions such as this one: Save MySQL Query results into text or CVS file

putty select command-line mysql
12 Answers

Terminate the query with \G in place of ;. For example:

SELECT * FROM sometable\G

This query displays the rows vertically, like this:

*************************** 1. row ***************************
                 Host: localhost
                   Db: mydatabase1
                 User: myuser1
          Select_priv: Y
          Insert_priv: Y
          Update_priv: Y
          ...
*************************** 2. row ***************************
                 Host: localhost
                   Db: mydatabase2
                 User: myuser2
          Select_priv: Y
          Insert_priv: Y
          Update_priv: Y
          ...
user_2660

Try enabling vertical mode, using \G to execute the query instead of ;:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable \G

Your results will be listed in the vertical mode, so each column value will be printed on a separate line. The output will be narrower but obviously much longer.

user_869300

Using mysql's ego command

From mysql's help command:

ego          (\G) Send command to mysql server, display result vertically.

So by appending a \G to your select, you can get a very clean vertical output:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable \G

Using a pager

You can tell MySQL to use the less pager with its -S option that chops wide lines and gives you an output that you can scroll with the arrow keys:

mysql> pager less -S

Thus, next time you run a command with a wide output, MySQL will let you browse the output with the less pager:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable;

If you're done with the pager and want to go back to the regular output on stdout, use this:

mysql> nopager
user_56605170

I wrote pspg - https://github.com/okbob/pspg

This pager is designed for tabular data - and MySQL is supported too.

MariaDB [sakila]> pager pspg -s 14 -X --force-uniborder --quit-if-one-screen
PAGER set to 'pspg -s 14 -X --force-uniborder --quit-if-one-screen'
MariaDB [sakila]> select now();
MariaDB [sakila]> select * from nicer_but_slower_film_list limit 100;
user_4066910

I believe putty has a maximum number of columns you can specify for the window.

For Windows I personally use Windows PowerShell and set the screen buffer width reasonably high. The column width remains fixed and you can use a horizontal scroll bar to see the data. I had the same problem you're having now.

edit: For remote hosts that you have to SSH into you would use something like plink + Windows PowerShell

user_978660
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