MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Making Long Output Lines More Readable

Problem

You have a query that produces long output lines that wrap around and look messy on your screen.

Solution

Use vertical output format.

Discussion

Some statements generate output lines that are so long they take up more than one line on your terminal, which can make query results difficult to read. Here is an example that shows what excessively long query output lines might look like on your screen:

mysql>SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM limbs;
+-------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+-----
----------------------------+---------+
| Field | Type        | Collation         | Null | Key | Default | Extra | Priv
ileges                      | Comment |
+-------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+-----
----------------------------+---------+
| thing | varchar(20) | latin1_swedish_ci | YES  |     | NULL    |       | sele
ct,insert,update,references |         |
| legs  | int(11)     | NULL              | YES  |     | NULL    |       | sele
ct,insert,update,references |         |
| arms  | int(11)     | NULL              | YES  |     | NULL    |       | sele
ct,insert,update,references |         |
+-------+-------------+-------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+-----
----------------------------+---------+

To avoid the problem, generate “vertical” output with each column value on a separate line. This is done by terminating a statement with \G rather than with a ; character or with \g. Here’s what the result from the preceding statement looks like when displayed using vertical format:

mysql>SHOW FULL COLUMNS FROM limbs\G *************************** ...