Hi Shailaja, In the case of machine readable output, CQL uses delimited output ('|') with whitespace on either side of the data values.
To better support machine readable output, it might be useful to allow user specified delimiters (in a separate Jira). E.g.: cqlsh *-s","* -e"CAPTURE '/tmp/props.csv';select * from system_views.system_properties limit 7" We could make something like that a precondition here. But it is just whitespace. I'd agree this shouldn't go into a patch release. On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 1:34 PM <shailajako...@icloud.com> wrote: > Hi Brad, > > While I prefer the indentation style that Postgres following for better > readability of text, if we are changing it, this may break existing scripts > of users/operators if tightly coupled with the current format/spaces etc > (Ideally shouldn’t be, but as Cassandra being used all over the world, such > scenarios are possible). To avoid breaking such existing scripts, I believe > either these changes need to happen in a major release or under a feature > flag (which can be deprecated over the time), for existing scripts to > continue without breaking until they are fixed. > > Thanks, > Shailaja > > > On Jan 9, 2024, at 5:23 PM, Derek Chen-Becker <de...@chen-becker.org> > wrote: > > Actually, now that I'm looking at the original email on my browser and not > my phone (and can see the formatting properly), I think we have the > nomenclature backward here. Left-alignment in the printing world means that > text in each cell starts at the left-most column for the cell, but in your > examples you're calling that right-aligned (and vice-versa). Along the > lines of what Stefan said, I think this probably came about more as a > "we'll just keep things simple and use the same alignment everywhere" > rather than an intentional right-alignment of text for a specific purpose. > I would actually be fine with left-aligning text to fit what appears to be > standard practice in other systems. > > Cheers, > > Derek > > On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 7:34 AM Brad <bscho...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> CQLSH currently left-aligns all output, affecting both numbers and text. >> While this works well for numbers, a better approach adopted by many is to >> left align numbers and right align text. >> >> For example, both Excel and Postgres shell use the later: >> >> psql >> # select * from employee; >> empid | name | dept >> -------+---------+------------ >> 1 | Clark | Sales >> 200 | Dave | Accounting >> 33 | Johnson | Sales >> >> >> while CQLSH simply left aligns all the columns >> >> cqlsh> select * from employee; >> >> empid | dept | name >> -------+------------+--------- >> 33 | Sales | Johnson >> 1 | Sales | Clark >> 200 | Accounting | Dave >> >> >> >> Left aligned text looks much worse on text values which share common >> prefixes >> >> cqlsh> select * from system_views.system_properties limit 7 ; >> >> >> name | value >> >> --------------------------------------------+-------------------------------------------- >> JAVA_HOME | >> /Users/brad/.jenv/versions/17 >> cassandra.jmx.local.port | >> 7199 >> cassandra.logdir | >> /usr/local/cassandra-5.0-beta1/bin/../logs >> cassandra.storagedir | >> /usr/local/cassandra-5.0-beta1/bin/../data >> com.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate | >> false >> com.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file | >> /etc/cassandra/jmxremote.password >> io.netty.transport.estimateSizeOnSubmit | >> false >> >> >> >> The Jira CASSANDRA-19150 >> <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-19150> discusses this >> in further detail with some additional examples. >> >> I wanted to raise the issue here to propose changing CQLSH to right-align >> text while continue to left-align numbers. >> >> Regards, >> >> Brad Schoening >> >> ReplyForward >> Add reaction >> > > > -- > +---------------------------------------------------------------+ > | Derek Chen-Becker | > | GPG Key available at https://keybase.io/dchenbecker and | > | https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=derek%40chen-becker.org | > | Fngrprnt: EB8A 6480 F0A3 C8EB C1E7 7F42 AFC5 AFEE 96E4 6ACC | > +---------------------------------------------------------------+ > > >