Question

I need to use a single command line to fetch a set of records from a database.
If I do this:

$ sqlite3 con.db "SELECT name,cell,email FROM contacts"

I get output with a separator “|”, where the output looks like this:

Alison|[phone]|[e-mail]
Ben|[phone]|[e-mail]
Steve|[phone]|[e-mail]

Is there a way (in single command line format like specified above) to change the output field separator to something else, like “;;;” or something else or more unique. This is because the output occasionally get the character “|” inside the records, and it causes issues.

My desired result is:

Alison;;;[phone];;;[e-mail]
Ben;;;[phone];;;[e-mail]
Steve;;;[phone];;;[e-mail]

Or any other unique separator, which is not likely to be found inside the values.

(The command is executed on a Linux machine)

Thank you.

Answer 1

The -separator option does what you want:

sqlite3 -separator ';;;' con.db "SELECT ..."

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The only way to format the output so that you are guaranteed to not get the separator in the values is to quote all strings:

sqlite3 con.db "SELECT quote(name), quote(cell), quote(email) FROM contacts"

However, this would require you to parse the output according to the SQL syntax rules.