Ugly formatting in SQL*Plus

Question

It is really annoying that when I run a select command in SQL*Plus such as:

SELECT * FROM books; 

The output is really badly formatted and unreadable (row cells are not in a row but separated by line breaks etc):

How can I configure it to show SELECT results in a nicer way?

EDIT:

This is my login.sql file contents:

SET ECHO OFF SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE 1000000 SET PAGESIZE 999 SET LINESIZE 132 

EDIT2:

Affer increasing the LINESIZE:

SET LINESIZE 32000 

It now looks like this:

Answer 1

Increase the linesize, e.g SET LINESIZE 32000

or use SET WRAP OFF (but this will truncate long values)

Answer 2

SQLPlus is a simple command line tool. It's not really intended for pretty reporting. However, it does have some formatting commands, which are documented in the SQLPlus User's Guide. Find out more.

For instance you might choose to format the TITLE column to display only the first twenty characters and display the SUMMARY column in its entirety like this:

COLUMN title FORMAT a20 TRUNCATED  COLUMN summary FORMAT a4o WORD_WRAPPED 

This will allow you to see your query laid out more neatly without embedding formatting commands in its projection.

Alternatively, use an IDE such as Quest's TOAD or Oracle's own SQL Developer. These tools include a query browser which automagically displays our query results in a more pleasing grid. (Other similar tools are available).