Dot commands are available in the DuckDB CLI client. To use one of these commands, begin the line with a period (.) immediately followed by the name of the command you wish to execute. Additional arguments to the command are entered, space separated, after the command. If an argument must contain a space, either single or double quotes may be used to wrap that parameter. Dot commands must be entered on a single line, and no whitespace may occur before the period. No semicolon is required at the end of the line. To see available commands, use the .help command.

List of Dot Commands

Using the .help Command

The .help text may be filtered by passing in a text string as the first argument.

.help m

.maxrows COUNT           Sets the maximum number of rows for display (default: 40). Only for duckbox mode.
.maxwidth COUNT          Sets the maximum width in characters. 0 defaults to terminal width. Only for duckbox mode.
.mode MODE ?TABLE?       Set output mode

.output: Writing Results to a File

By default, the DuckDB CLI sends results to the terminal's standard output. However, this can be modified using either the .output or .once commands. Pass in the desired output file location as a parameter. The .once command will only output the next set of results and then revert to standard out, but .output will redirect all subsequent output to that file location. Note that each result will overwrite the entire file at that destination. To revert back to standard output, enter .output with no file parameter.

In this example, the output format is changed to markdown, the destination is identified as a Markdown file, and then DuckDB will write the output of the SQL statement to that file. Output is then reverted to standard output using .output with no parameter.

.mode markdown
.output my_results.md
SELECT 'taking flight' AS output_column;
.output
SELECT 'back to the terminal' AS displayed_column;

The file my_results.md will then contain:

| output_column |
| ------------- |
| taking flight |

The terminal will then display:

| displayed_column     |
| -------------------- |
| back to the terminal |

A common output format is CSV, or comma separated values. DuckDB supports SQL syntax to export data as CSV or Parquet, but the CLI-specific commands may be used to write a CSV instead if desired.

.mode csv
.once my_output_file.csv
SELECT 1 AS col_1, 2 AS col_2
UNION ALL
SELECT 10 AS col1, 20 AS col_2;

The file my_output_file.csv will then contain:

col_1,col_2
1,2
10,20

By passing special options (flags) to the .once command, query results can also be sent to a temporary file and automatically opened in the user's default program. Use either the -e flag for a text file (opened in the default text editor), or the -x flag for a CSV file (opened in the default spreadsheet editor). This is useful for more detailed inspection of query results, especially if there is a relatively large result set. The .excel command is equivalent to .once -x.

.once -e
SELECT 'quack' AS hello;

The results then open in the default text file editor of the system, for example:

Tip macOS users can copy the results to their clipboards using pbcopy by using .once to output to pbcopy via a pipe: .once |pbcopy

Combining this with the .headers off and .mode lines options can be particularly effective.

Querying the Database Schema

All DuckDB clients support querying the database schema with SQL, but the CLI has additional dot commands that can make it easier to understand the contents of a database. The .tables command will return a list of tables in the database. It has an optional argument that will filter the results according to a LIKE pattern.

CREATE TABLE swimmers AS SELECT 'duck' AS animal;
CREATE TABLE fliers AS SELECT 'duck' AS animal;
CREATE TABLE walkers AS SELECT 'duck' AS animal;
.tables

fliers    swimmers  walkers

For example, to filter to only tables that contain an l, use the LIKE pattern %l%.

.tables %l%

fliers   walkers

The .schema command will show all of the SQL statements used to define the schema of the database.

.schema

CREATE TABLE fliers (animal VARCHAR);
CREATE TABLE swimmers (animal VARCHAR);
CREATE TABLE walkers (animal VARCHAR);

Dumping Database Content as SQL

The .dump command renders the database content as SQL statements, including both schema definitions and data. This is useful for creating backups or migrating data.

.dump

An optional TABLE argument filters the output using a LIKE pattern. Multiple patterns can be provided as additional arguments.

.dump %swim%

The --newlines option allows unescaped newline characters in the output:

.dump --newlines

Progress Bar

The DuckDB CLI client's progress bar supports customization through components.

The .progress_bar command supports --add and --clear parameters for adding and removing components.

For details on specific usage, see the examples below.

Configuring the Progress Bar Display

To check if the progress bar is enabled:

SELECT * FROM duckdb_settings() WHERE name = 'enable_progress_bar';

To check the current minimum amount of time (in milliseconds) a query needs to take before displaying a progress bar:

SELECT * FROM duckdb_settings() WHERE name = 'progress_bar_time';

To set the minimum amount of time that the progress bar displays to 100 milliseconds:

SET progress_bar_time = 100;

To set that progress bar component to a red text that displays the current time on the progress bar:

.progress_bar --add "{align:right}{min_size:20}{color:red}Time: {sql:select (current_time::varchar).split('.')[1]}{color:reset} "

.progress_bar --add commands are additive, issuing multiple --add calls will stack additional components on the progress bar.

To set that progress bar component to a blue text that displays the file cache RAM usage on the progress bar:

.progress_bar --add "{align:right}{min_size:20}{color:blue}External Cache Usage: {sql:select format_bytes(memory_usage_bytes) from duckdb_memory() where tag='EXTERNAL_FILE_CACHE'}{color:reset};

To reset all existing progress bar components:

.progress_bar --clear

Syntax Highlighters

The DuckDB CLI client has a syntax highlighter for the SQL queries and another for the duckbox-formatted result tables.

Configuring the Query Syntax Highlighter

By default the shell includes support for syntax highlighting. The CLI's syntax highlighter can be configured using the following commands.

To turn off the highlighter:

.highlight off

To turn on the highlighter:

.highlight on

To configure the color used to highlight constants:

.constant [red|green|yellow|blue|magenta|cyan|white|brightblack|brightred|brightgreen|brightyellow|brightblue|brightmagenta|brightcyan|brightwhite]

.constantcode terminal_code

For example:

.constantcode 033[31m

To configure the color used to highlight keywords:

.keyword [red|green|yellow|blue|magenta|cyan|white|brightblack|brightred|brightgreen|brightyellow|brightblue|brightmagenta|brightcyan|brightwhite]

.keywordcode terminal_code

For example:

.keywordcode 033[31m

Configuring the Result Syntax Highlighter

By default, the result highlighting makes a few small modifications:

• Bold column names.
• NULL values are greyed out.
• Layout elements are grayed out.

The highlighting of each of the components can be customized using the .highlight_colors command. For example:

.highlight_colors layout red
.highlight_colors column_type yellow
.highlight_colors column_name yellow bold_underline
.highlight_colors numeric_value cyan underline
.highlight_colors temporal_value red bold
.highlight_colors string_value green bold
.highlight_colors footer gray

The result highlighting can be disabled using .highlight_results off.

Shorthands

DuckDB's CLI allows using shorthands for dot commands. Once a sequence of characters can be unambiguously completed to a dot command or an argument, the CLI (silently) autocompletes them. For example:

.mo ma

Is equivalent to:

.mode markdown

Tip Avoid using shorthands in SQL scripts to improve readability and ensure that the scripts are future-proof.

Importing Data

The .import command imports data from a file into a DuckDB table. It uses DuckDB's reader functions (read_csv, read_json, read_parquet) and supports automatic schema detection. If the target table does not exist, it is automatically created.

The file format can be specified explicitly using --csv, --json, or --parquet. If no format is specified, the format is inferred from the file extension.

.import data.csv my_table

Additional parameters can be passed to the underlying reader function using `–⟨parameter⟩ ⟨value⟩{:.language-sql .highlight} syntax:

.import data.csv my_table --delimiter "|" --header false

To import a JSON file:

.import data.json my_table --json

To import a Parquet file:

.import data.parquet my_table