ClickHouse provides a native command-line client: `clickhouse-client`. The client supports command-line options and configuration files. For more information, see [Configuring](#interfaces_cli_configuration).
Different client and server versions are compatible with one another, but some features may not be available in older clients. We recommend using the same version of the client as the server app. When you try to use a client of the older version, then the server, `clickhouse-client` displays the message:
The client can be used in interactive and non-interactive (batch) mode. To use batch mode, specify the ‘query’ parameter, or send data to ‘stdin’ (it verifies that ‘stdin’ is not a terminal), or both. Similar to the HTTP interface, when using the ‘query’ parameter and sending data to ‘stdin’, the request is a concatenation of the ‘query’ parameter, a line feed, and the data in ‘stdin’. This is convenient for large INSERT queries.
By default, you can only process a single query in batch mode. To make multiple queries from a “script,” use the `--multiquery` parameter. This works for all queries except INSERT. Query results are output consecutively without additional separators. Similarly, to process a large number of queries, you can run ‘clickhouse-client’ for each query. Note that it may take tens of milliseconds to launch the ‘clickhouse-client’ program.
If ‘multiline’ is not specified (the default): To run the query, press Enter. The semicolon is not necessary at the end of the query. To enter a multiline query, enter a backslash `\` before the line feed. After you press Enter, you will be asked to enter the next line of the query.
If multiline is specified: To run a query, end it with a semicolon and press Enter. If the semicolon was omitted at the end of the entered line, you will be asked to enter the next line of the query.
Only a single query is run, so everything after the semicolon is ignored.
You can specify `\G` instead of or after the semicolon. This indicates Vertical format. In this format, each value is printed on a separate line, which is convenient for wide tables. This unusual feature was added for compatibility with the MySQL CLI.
The command line is based on ‘replxx’ (similar to ‘readline’). In other words, it uses the familiar keyboard shortcuts and keeps a history. The history is written to `~/.clickhouse-client-history`.
By default, the format used is PrettyCompact. You can change the format in the FORMAT clause of the query, or by specifying `\G` at the end of the query, using the `--format` or `--vertical` argument in the command line, or using the client configuration file.
To exit the client, press Ctrl+D, or enter one of the following instead of a query: “exit”, “quit”, “logout”, “exit;”, “quit;”, “logout;”, “q”, “Q”, “:q”
You can cancel a long query by pressing Ctrl+C. However, you will still need to wait for a little for the server to abort the request. It is not possible to cancel a query at certain stages. If you do not wait and press Ctrl+C a second time, the client will exit.
The command-line client allows passing external data (external temporary tables) for querying. For more information, see the section “External data for query processing”.
You can create a query with parameters and pass values to them from client application. This allows to avoid formatting query with specific dynamic values on client side. For example:
-`data type` — [Data type](../sql-reference/data-types/index.md) of the app parameter value. For example, a data structure like `(integer, ('string', integer))` can have the `Tuple(UInt8, Tuple(String, UInt8))` data type (you can also use another [integer](../sql-reference/data-types/int-uint.md) types). It's also possible to pass table, database, column names as a parameter, in that case you would need to use `Identifier` as a data type.
-`--vertical, -E`– If specified, use the [Vertical format](../interfaces/formats.md#vertical) by default to output the result. This is the same as `–format=Vertical`. In this format, each value is printed on a separate line, which is helpful when displaying wide tables.
