sqlite3 is chopping/cutting/truncating my text columns

Question

I have values being cut off and would like to display the full values.

Sqlite3 -column -header locations.dbs \"
select n.namelist, f.state, t.state
from name         


        

Answer 1

you could just use column (the unix command) like this:

sqlite3 -list -separator "|" -header db.dbs "Select ...." | column -t -s "|"

-list and -separator can be omitted, as they are defaults

Answer 2

There doesn't appear to be a way to make it automatic, but you can use the .width command to manually specify the column widths.

See here (search the section for .width).

Answer 3

I was indeed looking for solutions for the exact same issue and I found this workaround:

sqliteresult=`sqlite3 -header -list $SQLITE_FILE "SELECT * ..." | tr "\\n" ";"`
sqliteresult="${sqliteresult/;/;-----------------------------;}"
sqliteresult="${sqliteresult//;/\n}"
sqliteresult="${sqliteresult//|/\t|\t}"
echo -e $sqliteresult

Hoping it helps :)

~Stéphane

Answer 4

Expanding on the answer by zuloo, it is possible to use the interactive prompt and have automatic column widths too.

Apart from column you will also need rlwrap (sudo apt-get install rlwrap if you're on Ubuntu). You run it like this:

rlwrap -a -N -c -z pipeto sqlite3 -header locations.dbs

Or you can put an alias in your .bashrc or similar:

alias sqlite="rlwrap -a -N -c -z pipeto sqlite3 -header"

In the sqlite console, you can run your query like this:

select * from names; | column -n -t -s '|'

Or, to make it nicer, put a script somewhere in your $PATH:

#!/bin/bash
column -n -t -s '|'

Let's say it's called pp, don't forget to make it executable with chmod u+x pp. Then you can use the interactive prompt like this:

select * from names; | pp

Answer 5

Here is another way to format several tables and show the rowid in a nice format.

#/usr/bin/env bash

cli_opts="-header"

for table in "table1" "table2"; do
    select="select rowid as ' ', * from $table;"
    #echo "$select"
    echo "$table"
    sqlite3 $cli_opts database.db "$select" | column -t -s "|"
    echo -e '\n'
done