The default, unconfigured CLI client you use with MySQl or MariaDB is kind of awful, no colors, pretty bad query editing capabilities, and the output is not paginated. Let’s improve the experience.

Client

Start by creating a configuration file ~/.my.cnf with the following content.

Automatically prompt a password for your user to avoid the --user option each time

[client]

user = alx
password

Stop making annoying noises, god dammit!

no-beep

Is easy to type ^C by accident, don’t kill the session!

sigint-ignore

If the output is wider than the screen, make it readable

auto-vertical-output

Because I am a dummy indeed

i-am-a-dummy

You want completion, don’t you?

auto-rehash

Prompt & color

pager = "ccze -A | less -RSFXin"

This will paginate your output using less only if the output won’t fit in your screen. Also, colorize it using ccze (which can make it a little slower in some situations, so beware)

prompt="\n[\d]   (╯°□°）╯- ┻━┻    "

Show me the current database and use the drop table donger as the prompt (╯°□°）╯- ┻━┻ …. Drop table… Get it?

You might want to configure ccze as well with the ~/.ccze file:

numbers green
size yellow

Input

The CLI client uses readline, so let’s configure it to get vi-like bindings by creating a ~/.inputrc file with the content:

$if mysql
    set editing-mode vi
$endif

Pretty straight forward, just use vi editing mode for mysql.

You can get all the configure files from my dotfiles:

• .my.cnf
• .inputrc
• .cczerc