Making command-line results more readable

From Cosmin's Wiki

Home > MySQL > Making command-line results more readable

Making results more readable

This section refers only to users which are not accessing a MySql database via a graphical environment (like phpmyadmin or others...). Normally each command you pass to MySQL ends with a semicolon (;). However, when passing a command like

SELECT * FROM MYTABLE;

where MYTABLE has a lot of columns, the result will be displayed in a hardly readable form. For this, you could replace the previous statement with

SELECT * FROM MYTABLE \G

This will display results one below the other like this:

*************************** 6. row ***************************
                 Host: %
                   Db: fhn_cos
                 User: fhn
          Select_priv: Y
          Insert_priv: Y
          Update_priv: Y
          Delete_priv: Y
          Create_priv: Y
            Drop_priv: Y
           Grant_priv: N
      References_priv: Y
           Index_priv: Y
           Alter_priv: Y
Create_tmp_table_priv: Y
     Lock_tables_priv: Y
     Create_view_priv: Y
       Show_view_priv: Y
  Create_routine_priv: Y
   Alter_routine_priv: Y
         Execute_priv: Y
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

I would strongly recommend that you use the (\G) syntax only when you have a small number of rows returned and you want to do a deeper analysis on each column returned. Otherwise, limit the number of columns in your select statement.