How to best display in Terminal a MySQL SELECT returning too many fields?

Question

I\'m using PuTTY to run:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable;

sometable has many fields and this results in many columns trying

Answer 1

Using mysql's ego command

From mysql's help command:

ego          (\G) Send command to mysql server, display result vertically.

So by appending a \G to your select, you can get a very clean vertical output:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable \G

Using a pager

You can tell MySQL to use the less pager with its -S option that chops wide lines and gives you an output that you can scroll with the arrow keys:

mysql> pager less -S

Thus, next time you run a command with a wide output, MySQL will let you browse the output with the less pager:

mysql> SELECT * FROM sometable;

If you're done with the pager and want to go back to the regular output on stdout, use this:

mysql> nopager