MySQL Screwed Up Output

Question

I'm see some very strange outputs from MySQL, and I don't know whether it's my console or my data that's causing this. Here are some screenshots:

enter image description here

Any ideas?

edit:

mysql> describe transformed_step_a1_sfdc_lead_history;
+-------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field             | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| old_value         | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| new_value         | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+-------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Max

It is most likely because one of those columns is type `TEXT` with a bunch of tabs and spaces. — Ryan, Sep 25 '14 at 01:36
@true hi, I just ran a "describe" and found that both of these columns are VARCHAR(255) — Max, Sep 25 '14 at 01:39

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 25 '14 at 02:15

2

To verify if there is any control characters, you can use -s option, see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysql-command-options.html#option_mysql_raw

answered Sep 25 '14 at 02:15

Jack Zhang

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '14 at 01:51

It's impossible to tell exactly what the problem is from your screenshots, but the text in your database contains control characters. The usual culprit is CR, which moves the cursor back to the beginning of the line and starts overwriting text already there.

If you have programmatic access to your database then you will be able to dump the values with control characters expressed as pintables so that you can see what is actually in there.

MySQL Screwed Up Output

2 Answers2