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

Check out the Oracle documentation:

• Formatting SQLPlus Reports
• Generating HTML Reports from SQLPlus

You can generate a tab in Oracle by using the tab's ASCII value 9 and the chr function:

select chr(9) from dual;

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.