Display select results vertically in psql, as is done by MySQL's \G

Question

In MySQL, you can terminate a select query with \G (as opposed to \g) to display the results vertically:

select * from foo \G

***************
 id: 1
bar: Hello
***************
 id: 2
bar: World

How can one do the same thing for PostgreSQL using psql?

And also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9604723/alternate-output-format-for-psql — pevik, Oct 19 '15 at 17:04
Does this answer your question? [MySQL Extended Display](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1794992/mysql-extended-display) — amphetamachine, Oct 15 '20 at 19:11
@amphetamachine not really. That question is the inverse, so depending upon which DB you are familiar with, you'd come at this one or the other way. This question has many more views than that question, so I'd suggest that this resource has more SEO capital for whatever reason than the other answer as well. — Drew Noakes, Oct 15 '20 at 23:39

score 260 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 13 '21 at 01:26

260

You can do this by enabling Expanded display.

Toggle this setting via \x. For example:

# \x
Expanded display is on.
# \x
Expanded display is off.

When on, results are shown in tabular (vertical) form:

-[ RECORD 1 ]
id  | 1
bar | Hello
-[ RECORD 2 ]
id  | 2
bar | World

You can run this for a single command by using the \x\g\x suffix to toggle expanded display on, run the query, then toggle it off again.

select * from foo \x\g\x

Or via psql param as shared here

psql db -xc 'select * from table'

edited Mar 13 '21 at 01:26

Nam G VU

answered Mar 14 '14 at 14:29

Drew Noakes

14

Or use `-x` switch when running non-interactively (`psql db -xc 'select * from foo'`). – x-yuri Apr 20 '18 at 13:33

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '22 at 18:50

1

Same can be achieved in dbeaver for postgres using "record" option in grid results

answered Apr 22 '22 at 18:50

itsavy

2 Answers2