SQLPlus settings to generate tab-separated data file

Question

Anyone have a good set of sqlplus configuration directives to help transform a given sql query into nicely tab separated output for pulling into a spreadsheet or further processing?

Answer 1

As Justin pointed out in his link, using the set colsep function SQLPlus command saves typing a separator for each column.

But for tab-delimited, set colsep Chr(9) won't work.

For UNIX or LINUX, use set colsep ' ' with the space between the single-quotes being a typed tab.

For Windows, use these settings:

col TAB# new_value TAB NOPRINT
select chr(9) TAB# from dual;
set colsep "&TAB"

select * from table;

Answer 2

One particular script that I have stolen on more than one occasion comes from an AskTom thread on extracting data to a flat file. If I needed a quick and dirty flat file out of SQL*Plus. I would tend to prefer the DUMP_CSV function Tom posted earlier on that thread for any sort of ongoing process, though.