arangodb/Documentation/Books/Manual/Administration/Arangosh/Output.md

ArangoDB Shell Output

The ArangoDB shell will print the output of the last evaluated expression by default:

@startDocuBlockInline lastExpressionResult
@EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT{lastExpressionResult}
42 * 23
@END_EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT
@endDocuBlock lastExpressionResult

In order to prevent printing the result of the last evaluated expression, the expression result can be captured in a variable, e.g.

@startDocuBlockInline lastExpressionResultCaptured
@EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT{lastExpressionResultCaptured}
var calculationResult = 42 * 23
@END_EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT
@endDocuBlock lastExpressionResultCaptured

There is also the print function to explicitly print out values in the ArangoDB shell:

@startDocuBlockInline printFunction
@EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT{printFunction}
print({ a: "123", b: [1,2,3], c: "test" });
@END_EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT
@endDocuBlock printFunction

By default, the ArangoDB shell uses a pretty printer when JSON documents are printed. This ensures documents are printed in a human-readable way:

@startDocuBlockInline usingToArray
@EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT{usingToArray}
db._create("five")
for (i = 0; i < 5; i++) db.five.save({value:i})
db.five.toArray()
~db._drop("five");
@END_EXAMPLE_ARANGOSH_OUTPUT
@endDocuBlock usingToArray

While the pretty-printer produces nice looking results, it will need a lot of screen space for each document. Sometimes a more dense output might be better. In this case, the pretty printer can be turned off using the command stop_pretty_print().

To turn on pretty printing again, use the start_pretty_print() command.