Display select results vertically in psql, as is done by MySQL's \G

Question

In MySQL, you can terminate a select query with \G (as opposed to \g) to display the results vertically:

select * from foo \G  ***************  id: 1 bar: Hello ***************  id: 2 bar: World 

How can one do the same thing for PostgreSQL using psql?

Answer 1

You can do this by enabling Expanded display.

Toggle this setting via \x. For example:

# \x Expanded display is on. # \x Expanded display is off. 

When on, results are shown in tabular (vertical) form:

-[ RECORD 1 ] id  | 1 bar | Hello -[ RECORD 2 ] id  | 2 bar | World 

You can run this for a single command by using the \x\g\x suffix to toggle expanded display on, run the query, then toggle it off again.

select * from foo \x\g\x 

Or via psql param as shared here

psql db -xc 'select * from table'