One problem with the MySQL command line client is that queries with lots of columns tend to wrap crazily based on your terminal size. To overcome this, you can get a vertical output by terminating your queries with \G instead of ;. I find this format extremely helpful in cases where I know only one row will be returned. By way of example, here's the output of a query that shows the last IP to be inserted into the Spam Karma 2 blacklist for this website. When I originally ran this query, it wrapped multiple lines on my screen and was very difficult to read. What an improvement!

(slap@localhost) [slaptijack]> SELECT * FROM sk2_blacklist ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1 \\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
           id: 701
         type: ip_black
        value: 200.175.116.162
        score: 44
        trust: 100
     comments: 
        added: 2007-12-20 02:21:16
     added_by: sk2_blacklist_plugin
    last_used: 2007-12-20 02:21:16
   used_count: 0
user_reviewed: no
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

(slap@localhost) [slaptijack]>

If you want this sort of output all the time, you need to add an option to the .my.cnf file in your home directory.

[mysql]
vertical

That's all there is to it. With this change in place, you can terminate your queries with ; as usual but get the \G output instead. You could even make this change globally for all users on your system by making the same change in /etc/my.cnf.

Further Reading

• High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, Replication, and More by Baron Schwartz, Peter Zaitsev, Vadim Tkachenko, Jeremy Zawodny, Arjen Lentz, and Derek Balling
• MySQL Stored Procedure Programming by Guy Harrison, Steven Feuerstein