MySQL tables are not aligned right - mysql

Question

I have a question which relates to MySQL. The problem can be seen in these two images:
http://imgur.com/NrOwSxS,yPo9Cra
http://imgur.com/NrOwSxS,yPo9Cra#1
Does anyone know why MySQL is doing this? It should show up as a nice and neat table, not this bundle of gibberish. Thanks in advance! :D

Answer 1

First, to show that there's nothing really wrong, try this query:
SELECT firstname FROM contact_info
That should look good. Now try this:
SELECT firstname, lastname FROM contact_info
That's how you pick individual columns.
Really you want to capture output to a file, this page shows you how: The MySQL Command-Line Tool
Then you can learn to use other programs to format it nicely.

Answer 2

I assume you created your table somewhat like this:
create table automobile (make char(10),model char(10),year int, color char(10), style char(50), MSRP int);
insert into automobile values ('Ford','Mustang',2006,'Blue','Convertible',27000);
insert into automobile values ('Toyota','Prius',2005,'Silver','Hybrid',22000);
insert into automobile values ('Toyota','Camry',2006,'Blue','Sedan',26000);
insert into automobile values ('Dodge','1500',2005,'Green','Pickup',26000);
so a
describe automobile
will show you your columns as:
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| make | char(10) | YES | | NULL | |
| model | char(10) | YES | | NULL | |
| year | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
| color | char(10) | YES | | NULL | |
| style | char(50) | YES | | NULL | |
| MSRP | int(11) | YES | | NULL | |
+-------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+
as long as your columns in total are smaller than your terminal's width you should see
the expected result:
mysql> select * from automobile;
+--------+---------+------+--------+-------------+-------+
| make | model | year | color | style | MSRP |
+--------+---------+------+--------+-------------+-------+
| Ford | Mustang | 2006 | Blue | Convertible | 27000 |
| Toyota | Prius | 2005 | Silver | Hybrid | 22000 |
| Toyota | Camry | 2006 | Blue | Sedan | 26000 |
| Dodge | 1500 | 2005 | Green | Pickup | 28000 |
+--------+---------+------+--------+-------------+-------+
if you'd like the result smaller then pick the columns you'd like to see e.g.
select make,model from automobile
mysql> select make,model from automobile;
+--------+---------+
| make | model |
+--------+---------+
| Ford | Mustang |
| Toyota | Prius |
| Toyota | Camry |
| Dodge | 1500 |
+--------+---------+
to make the content of a column smaller you may use the left string function
select left(make,4) as make, left(model,5) as model,left(style,5) as style from automobile;
+------+-------+-------+
| make | model | style |
+------+-------+-------+
| Ford | Musta | Conve |
| Toyo | Prius | Hybri |
| Toyo | Camry | Sedan |
| Dodg | 1500 | Picku |
+------+-------+-------+

Answer 3

You can try supplying a line separator character in the end.
mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE *file_path* INTO *table_name* LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';
Separator character may vary for editors. In Windows, most editors use '\r\n'.