How do I output the results of a HiveQL query to CSV?

Question

we would like to put the results of a Hive query to a CSV file. I thought the command should look like this:

insert overwrite directory \'/home/output.csv\'          


        

Answer 1

You should use CREATE TABLE AS SELECT (CTAS) statement to create a directory in HDFS with the files containing the results of the query. After that you will have to export those files from HDFS to your regular disk and merge them into a single file.

You also might have to do some trickery to convert the files from '\001' - delimited to CSV. You could use a custom CSV SerDe or postprocess the extracted file.