\pset parameter [ value ]

This command sets options affecting the output of query result tables. parameter describes which option is to be set. The semantics of value depend thereon.

Sets the output format to one of unaligned, aligned, html, or latex. Unique abbreviations are allowed. (That would mean one letter is enough.)

"Unaligned" writes all columns of a row on a line, separated by the currently active field separator. This is intended to create output that might be intended to be read in by other programs (tab- separated, comma-separated). "Aligned" mode is the standard, human-readable, nicely formatted text output that is default. The "HTML" and "LaTeX" modes put out tables that are intended to be included in documents using the respective mark-up language. They are not complete documents! (This might not be so dramatic in HTML, but in LaTeX you must have a complete document wrapper.)

The second argument must be a number. In general, the higher the number the more borders and lines the tables will have, but this depends on the particular format. In HTML mode, this will translate directly into the border=... attribute, in the others only values 0 (no border), 1 (internal dividing lines), and 2 (table frame) make sense.

Toggles between regular and expanded format. When expanded format is enabled, all output has two columns with the column name on the left and the data on the right. This mode is useful if the data wouldn't fit on the screen in the normal "horizontal" mode.

The second argument is a string that should be printed whenever a column is null. The default is not to print anything, which can easily be mistaken for, say, an empty string. Thus, one might choose to write \pset null '(null)'.

Specifies the field separator to be used in unaligned output mode. That way one can create, for example, tab- or comma-separated output, which other programs might prefer. To set a tab as field separator, type \pset fieldsep '\t'. The default field separator is '|' (a vertical bar).

Specifies the record (line) separator to use in unaligned output mode. The default is a newline character.

Toggles between tuples only and full display. Full display may show extra information such as column headers, titles, and various footers. In tuples only mode, only actual table data is shown.

Sets the table title for any subsequently printed tables. This can be used to give your output descriptive tags. If no argument is given, the title is unset.

Allows you to specify any attributes to be placed inside the HTML table tag. This could for example be cellpadding or bgcolor. Note that you probably don't want to specify border here, as that is already taken care of by \pset border.

Controls use of a pager for query and vsql help output. If the environment variable PAGER is set, the output is piped to the specified program. Otherwise a platform-dependent default (such as more) is used.

When the pager is off, the pager is not used. When the pager is on, the pager is used only when appropriate, i.e. the output is to a terminal and will not fit on the screen. (vsql does not do a perfect job of estimating when to use the pager.) \pset pager turns the pager on and off. Pager can also be set to always, which causes the pager to be always used.

Illustrations on how these different formats look can be seen in the Examples section.

Tip: There are various shortcut commands for \pset. See

\a,

\C,

\H,

\t,

\T, and

\ x.

Toggles extended table formatting mode. As such it is equivalent to \pset expanded.

There is no space between the backslash and the x.

Specifies attributes to be placed within the table tag in HTML tabular output mode. This command is equivalent to \pset tableattr table_options.

Toggles the display of output column name headings and row count footer. This command is equivalent to \pset tuples_only and is provided for convenience.

Toggles HTML query output format. This command is for compatibility and convenience, but see \pset about setting other output options.

Sets the title of any tables being printed as the result of a query or unsets any such title. This command is equivalent to \pset title title. (The name of this command derives from "caption", as it was previously only used to set the caption in an HTML table.)

Toggles output format alignment. This command is kept for backwards compatibility. See \pset for a more general solution. It is similar to the command line option -A --no-align, which only disables alignment.

Note: It is an error to call \pset without arguments. In the future this call might show the current status of all printing options.