Is there any way to get the column name along with the output while execute any query in Hive?

Question

In Hive, when we do a query (like: select * from employee), we do not get any column names in the output (like name, age, salary that we would get in R

Answer 1

If we want to see the columns names of the table in HiveQl, the following hive conf property should be set to true.

hive> set hive.cli.print.header=true;

If you prefer to see the column names always then update the $HOME/.hiverc file with the above setting in the first line..

--Hive automatically looks for a file named .hiverc in your HOME directory and runs the commands it contains, if any

Answer 2

Use set hive.cli.print.header=true;

hive> set hive.cli.print.header=true;      
hive> select * from tblemployee;
OK
id      name    gender  salary  departmentid
1       tomr    male    40000   1
2       cats    female  30000   2
3       john    male    50000   1
4       james   male    35000   3
5       sara    female  29000   2
6       bens    male    35000   1
7       saman   female  30000   NULL
8       russel  male    40000   2
9       valar   female  30000   1
10      todd    male    95000   NULL
Time taken: 9.892 seconds

Answer 3

All above answers already answer the question. But in case if someone wants this property to be ON permanently, then there is this property: hive.cli.print.header in hive-default.xml or hive-site.xml.

Its default value is false. Make its value as true and save. Done.

Answer 4

Most of the solutions are accurate.

setting the property hive.cli.print.header = true works.

But if you are using a cloudera , HDP or any other distributions, these will be reset. Hence update these value in the Hive configurations and restart the services.

This will be a permanent fix. hope this helps.

Answer 5

1)Permenant solution
change this property in hive-site.xml file under $HIVE_HOME/conf folder
    <property>
    <name>hive.cli.print.header</name>
    <value>true</value>
    <description>Whether to print the names of the columns in query output.
    </description>
    </property>
2)Temporary solution:
go to hive prompt execute this comman
   hive>set hive.cli.print.header=True

Answer 6

To print header along with the output, the following hive conf property should be set to true before executing the query.

hive> set hive.cli.print.header=true;
hive> select * from table_name;

We can also use query like this, if we want to get result in file.

hive -e 'set hive.cli.print.header=true;select * from table_name;' > result.xls

Where table_name your table name