MySQL Cookbook

Selecting Tabular or Tab-Delimited Query Output Format

Problem

mysql produces tabular output when you want tab-delimited output, or vice versa.

Solution

Select the desired format explicitly with the appropriate command-line option.

Discussion

When you use mysql non-interactively (such as to read queries from a file or to send results into a pipe), it writes output in tab-delimited format by default. Sometimes it’s desirable to produce tabular output instead. For example, if you want to print or mail query results, tab-delimited output doesn’t look very nice. Use the -t (or --table) option to produce tabular output that is more readable:

% mysql -t cookbook < inputfile | lpr
% mysql -t cookbook < inputfile | mail paul

The inverse operation is to produce batch (tab-delimited) output in interactive mode. To do this, use -B or --batch.