Sqlcmd to generate file without dashed line under header, without row count

Question

Using the following sqlcmd script:

sqlcmd -S . -d MyDb -E -s, -W -Q "select account,rptmonth, thename from theTable"  
> c:\dataExport.csv

I get an csv output file containing

acctnum,rptmonth,facilname

-------,--------,---------
ALLE04,201406,Allendale Community for Senior Living-LTC APPL02,201406,Applewood Estates ARBO02,201406,Arbors Care Center
ARIS01,201406,AristaCare at Cherry Hill
. . .

(139 rows affected)

Is there a way to get rid of the dashed line under the column headers : -------,--------, but keep the column headers?

and also a way to get rid of the two lines used for the row count on the bottom?

I tries using parm -h-1 but that got rid of the column headers as well as the dashed line.

score 63 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '14 at 07:33

63

Solutions:

1) To remove the row count ("(139 rows affected)") you should use SET NOCOUNT ON statement. See ref.

2) To remove column headers you should use -h parameter with value -1. See ref (section Formatting Options).

Examples:

C:\Users\sqlservr.exe>sqlcmd -S(local)\SQL2012 -d Test -E -h -1 -s, -W -Q "set nocount on; select * from dbo.Account" > d:\export.txt.

or

C:\Users\sqlservr.exe>sqlcmd -S(local)\SQL2012 -d Test -E -h -1 -s, -W -Q "set nocount on; select * from dbo.Account" -o "d:\export2.txt"

answered Jul 05 '14 at 07:33

Bogdan Sahlean

19,233
3
42
57

2

Thanks for the "nocount" help. That worked. However, as I stated in my question, I need the column heading titles, but not the dashed line, and -h -1 also removes the column heading titles. Is there a way to get rid of the dashed line under the column headers : -------,--------, but keep the column headers? – Lill Lansey Jul 07 '14 at 12:43
1

I am awarding you the bounty although you answered only part of the question. Thank you for that. – Lill Lansey Jul 10 '14 at 13:41
1

@LillLansey you are probably going to need to select the column names using meta data (if dynamically) or manually select the column names in quotes and then union all the data underneath the columns. That can be your -Q query. Combining that method with this method should produce what you want. Or you could also create a process to open the file and add the headers and then close the file. But that's going to be a few more lines of code. – DtechNet Dec 17 '18 at 18:35
If you want to remove the dashed line but still keep the headers, you want to use JSkyS' answer below. – Weihui Guo Apr 16 '19 at 19:53

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 01 '19 at 20:08

23

The guy with the top answer didn't answer how to remove the dashed line. This is my awesome solution.

First include -h -1 which removes both the dashed line and header
Then before your select statement manually inject the header string that you need with a PRINT statement. So in your case PRINT 'acctnum,rptmonth,facilname' select..*...from...

Sorry I'm 4 years and 9 months late.

answered Apr 01 '19 at 20:08

JSkyS

413
6
14

This is the correct answer! It removes the dashed line but still keeps the headers. – Weihui Guo Apr 16 '19 at 19:48
plus one for being 4 years and 9 months late :) – Jay Jan 15 '21 at 20:02

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 21 '17 at 19:58

Use the following;

sqlcmd -S . -d MyDb -E -s, -h-1 -W -Q "set nocount on;select 'account','rptmonth', 'thename';select account,rptmonth, thename from theTable"  
> c:\dataExport.csv

remove the header -h-1
remove row count [set nocount on;]
add header select [select 'account','rptmonth', 'thename';]
add your select [select account,rptmonth, thename from theTable;]

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 10 '15 at 01:05

To remove the Row Count: Add the below to your SQL statement

    SET NOCOUNT ON;

To remove the hyphen row try the following upon successful execution:

    findstr /v /c:"---" c:\dataExport.csv > c:\finalExport.csv

I use "---" as all my columns are over 3 characters and I never have that string in my data but you could also use "-,-" to reduce the risk further or any delimiter based on your data in place of the ",".

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 30 '18 at 17:39

2

In my case worked well as :

type Temp.txt | findstr /v -- > DestFile.txt

answered Jan 30 '18 at 17:39

Rinaldo Tavani Pinheiro

21
1

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 10 '22 at 13:50

2

This is the one line solution, without doing anything inside the stored procedure to append the column headers:

sqlcmd -S . -d MyDb -E -s, -W -Q "select account,rptmonth, thename from theTable"
| findstr /v /c:"-" /b > "c:\dataExport.csv" & exit 0

What this does is it intercepts all console output and replaces the "-" char BEFORE it redirects to the output file. There is NO need to output to intermediary file. And you will need a one-liner command if you use an agent to run these commands remotely on the sql server machines, which most of the times are locked from hosting *.bat files (which you'd need for multiline commands). I added the "exit 0" at the end to not fail the caller application overall. You may remove it starting "& exit 0" if you don't care about that.

This one liner is why I chose sqlcmd over bcp out, by the way. BCP, although optimized for speed, cannot output column headers unless doing the ugly trick within the stored proc, to append them there as a union all.

Just in case you have access to writing a bat file that contains this one liner, you MUST add @ECHO OFF before it. Otherwise the console output will also have the actual command.

Hope it helps.

answered Jun 10 '22 at 13:50

nenea

127
8

what if your data returned by select contains hyphen? – Nikita Jun 20 '22 at 14:34
Works fine even with hyphen in the data returned. Did you try it? – nenea Dec 06 '22 at 14:49
sqlcmd -S myserver -d mydb -E -s, -W -Q "SELECT * FROM [COMMON].[COVERAGE_CD] WHERE COVERAGE_DESC LIKE '%-%'" | findstr /v /c:"-" /b > "c:\dataExport.csv" & exit 0 – nenea Dec 06 '22 at 14:50
COVERAGE_CD,INSERT_ID,INSERT_TMSTMP,UPDATE_ID,UPDATE_TMSTMP,DELETE_IND,COVERAGE_DESC,THRD_PARTY_IND LBI,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,N,Liability - Bodily Injury,Y LPD,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,N,Liability - Property Damage,Y NO_LPD,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,stg,2012-05-15 23:14:20.233,N,Not Liability - Property Damage,N – nenea Dec 06 '22 at 14:51
So yes, it does work – nenea Dec 06 '22 at 14:51
you have said "`What this does is it intercepts all console output and **replaces the "-" char** BEFORE it redirects to the output file`". So if output contains "-" all of them should be replaced, even if we need to save the "-" in the actual data rows. btw, the script in comment a little bit different from the answer, the pattern is "%-%" instead of "-". – Nikita Dec 08 '22 at 08:41
so I thought, that "-" in data will be also removed, not only the "-" for the header – Nikita Dec 08 '22 at 08:42
If you look at the output I posted above, the dates ("2012-05-15") and some text fields ("Liability - Bodily Injury") kept the dash. So it works. – nenea Mar 15 '23 at 19:46
I have already forgotten details) but remember that your answer was helpful, thank you for posting – Nikita Mar 20 '23 at 16:18

Z.T. Wai · Answer 7 · 2019-09-17T05:24:17.490

1

In addition, if you want to query out all records in a table, you can code as

SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT SUBSTRING((SELECT ','+ COLUMN_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME=N'%table_name%' FOR XML PATH('') ), 2, 9999);
SELECT * FROM %table_name%

Assign the above queries into a variable %query%. The the command will be looks like as below.

SQLCMD -h -1 -W -E -S %sql_server% -d %sql_dabase% -Q %query% -s"," -o output_file.csv

edited Sep 17 '19 at 05:24

answered Sep 17 '19 at 05:04

Z.T. Wai

11
2

2

How is that an improvement to the answer that was accepted 5(!) years ago? You add a select that goes unexplained. As well as parameters that the OP did not use. You should explain these. – Markus Deibel Sep 17 '19 at 05:15

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Oct 19 '22 at 12:02

1

With SQL Server 2017 (14.x) and later you can print header with:

SELECT string_agg(COLUMN_NAME, ', ') within group (order by ORDINAL_POSITION asc) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME='YOUR_TABLE_NAME'

edited Oct 19 '22 at 12:02

Drashti Kheni

1,065
9
23

answered Oct 12 '22 at 19:58

Diego Schmidt

11
2

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Nov 03 '16 at 12:01

1.Create the file first with the header columns

2.Apprend the sqlcmd output to the file using the option -h-1

echo acctnum,rptmonth,facilname > c:\dataExport.csv sqlcmd -S . -d MyDb -E -s, -h-1 -W -Q "select account,rptmonth, thename from theTable" >> c:\dataExport.csv

score 0 · Answer 10 · edited Aug 24 '20 at 17:59

0

I used another solution to solve the issue of removing the dashed line below the header.

DECLARE @combinedString VARCHAR(MAX);

SELECT @combinedString = COALESCE(@combinedString + '|', '') + COLUMN_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME  = 'YOUR_TABLE_NAME'

Then just use Print @combinedString above your select statement. I used pipe delimiter.

edited Aug 24 '20 at 17:59

Suraj Rao

29,388
11
94
103

answered Aug 24 '20 at 17:56

thalearningmenace

21
4

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered May 18 '23 at 07:15

0

Kind of late to the party but if you're on Linux you can use sed to remove the second line after the file is produced like this:

sed -i '2d' exported.csv

answered May 18 '23 at 07:15

Spyros El.

423
3
13

Sqlcmd to generate file without dashed line under header, without row count

11 Answers11

Linked