Scripts, exports and pipes

quarry works well in scripts and pipelines. It runs non-interactively whenever you give it -e, -f, or input on stdin.

quarry app.db -e "select * from users" -F csv > users.csv
quarry postgres://me@localhost/app -f migration.sql
cat report.sql | quarry mysql://root@127.0.0.1/shop

Where the SQL comes from

Option	Runs
-e "sql"	That SQL. Repeat -e to run several, in order.
-f file.sql	Every statement in the file, after any -e.
stdin	Everything piped in. Only read when there is no -e or -f.

A single -e can hold several statements separated by ;. It can also be one special command, such as -e "\dt" or -e "describe users".

In a file or on stdin, lines that start with \ (or . on SQLite), and delimiter lines, are run as special commands when they appear between statements. Everything else is sent to the server as SQL. Word forms such as use db are sent as SQL there too. A \q stops the script. \i file in the REPL runs a file the same way.

Output

Situation	Format
You pass -F / --format	That format
stdout is a pipe or a file	TSV, with a header row
stdout is a terminal	Your configured table_format (a rounded table by default)

quarry app.db -e "select id, email from users limit 2"

id	email
1	user1@example.com
2	user2@example.com

The machine formats, csv, tsv, json, jsonl, html, sql-insert and sql-update, print only the data. The table formats also print a status line such as 3 rows. See Output formats for all of them.

In a script, quarry doesn't page, truncate long values, switch to vertical layout, ask before large results, or ask for confirmation before destructive statements. Colour is off when stdout isn't a terminal; --no-color or NO_COLOR=1 turns it off everywhere.

Errors and exit codes

• A failing statement stops the script and quarry exits with status 1. Errors go to stderr.
• --continue-on-error keeps going after a failure. The exit status is still 1 if anything failed.
• A connection failure also exits with status 1.
• On success the exit status is 0.

if ! quarry "$DATABASE_URL" -f migrate.sql; then
  echo "migration failed" >&2
  exit 1
fi

Add -w (--no-password) in automation so quarry never waits for a password prompt.

From the REPL

You don't need a separate command to save results from an interactive session:

Command	Does
\export csv out.csv select …	Writes the complete result of the query to a file, in any format
\o out.txt	Sends the next result to a file instead of the screen
tee out.txt	Copies every result to a file until notee. Appends by default; tee -o overwrites.
| wc -l	Pipes the next result into a shell command

Files written by quarry are readable only by you (mode 600).

Careful

In an interactive session, \export still asks before fetching more than row_limit rows, and answering no truncates the export. For very large exports, run the query from a script with -F, or set row_limit = 0 to turn the question off.

Logging every statement

Set log_queries = true in the config and quarry appends one line per statement to ~/.local/share/quarry/quarry.log:

2026-09-30 12:04:11	0.8 ms	ok	select * from users where id = 1
2026-09-30 12:04:15	1.2 ms	error: no such column: nmae	select nmae from users

The fields are tab-separated: time, duration, outcome, and the statement with newlines flattened. It covers the REPL and scripts, not the TUI. Statements that look like they contain passwords are left out.

Related

• Command-line options
• Output formats