Getting column names with BCP queryout

Question

I need to BCP a table into a tab-delimited file, but I need the column names in the first record of the table. Question 1: Am I right that BCP does not have a switch for t

Answer 1

bcp does not support exporting the column headers with the data, however there are some workarounds like exporting the headers in a separate file, then merging both the headers and data files as the following:

exec master..xp_cmdshell 'BCP "select 'SETTINGS_ID','GROUP_NAME'" queryout d:\header.csv  -c  -T -t,'

exec master..xp_cmdshell 'BCP "select SETTINGS_ID,GROUP_NAME from [DB]..[TABLE]" queryout "d:\columns.csv" -c -t, -T '

exec master..xp_cmdshell 'copy /b "d:\header.csv"+"d:\columns.csv" "d:/result.csv"'

You may also delete the unused files:

exec master..xp_cmdshell 'del "d:\header.csv"'
exec master..xp_cmdshell 'del "d:\columns.csv"'

Or maybe you can combine all the data in a view (adding headers) and export it