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Description

The Pretty format outputs data as Unicode-art tables, using ANSI-escape sequences for displaying colors in the terminal. A full grid of the table is drawn, and each row occupies two lines in the terminal. Each result block is output as a separate table. This is necessary so that blocks can be output without buffering results (buffering would be necessary to pre-calculate the visible width of all the values). NULL is output as ᴺᵁᴸᴸ.

Example usage

Example (shown for the PrettyCompact format):
Query
Response
Rows are not escaped in any of the Pretty formats. The following example is shown for the PrettyCompact format:
Query
Response
To avoid dumping too much data to the terminal, only the first 10,000 rows are printed. If the number of rows is greater than or equal to 10,000, the message “Showed first 10 000” is printed.
This format is only appropriate for outputting a query result, but not for parsing data.
The Pretty format supports outputting total values (when using WITH TOTALS) and extremes (when ‘extremes’ is set to 1). In these cases, total values and extreme values are output after the main data, in separate tables. This is shown in the following example which uses the PrettyCompact format:
Query
Response

Format settings

The following settings are common to all Pretty formats:
Last modified on July 12, 2026