It’s hard to view long column names in mysql CLI as the screen wraps them and then instead of a table spanning horizontally , half the columns are stacked over each other , making it confusing to look at .
There are two ways to make it pretty –
1. Horizontally Scrollable Paged View
Something like the below output of a select query
To make it more readable we can use the following command
mysql > pager less -SFX;
mysql > select * from databasename.table;and then you can use right and left arrow keys to navigate the whole lengthy row and to get out of that view you can press q
It looks something like the following GIF
If you wish to reset this behaviour use –
mysql> nopager;2. Vertical Columns View
You can also just add a \G at end of your query to get a vertical output like the following
SELECT * FROM tablename LIMIT 2 \G
Bonus: Third Party Alternative to MySQL CLI
You can also use the following CLI tools to view/work with MySQL in a more efficient manner
It is based on python and has lots of features , also available on Windows, Mac, Linux so give it a try !
