-F --field-separator

-F separator or --field-separator separator specifies the field separator for unaligned output (default: "|") (-P fieldsep=). (See -A --no-align.) This is equivalent to \pset fieldsep or \f.

To set the field separator value to a control character, use your shell's control character escape notation. In Bash, you specify a control character in an argument using a dollar sign ($) followed by a string contained in single quotes. This string can contain C-string escapes (such as \t for tab), or a backslash () followed by an octal value for the character you want to use.

The following example demonstrates setting the separator character to tab (\t), vertical tab (\v) and the octal value of vertical tab (\013).

$ vsql -At -c "SELECT * FROM testtable;"
A|1|2|3
B|4|5|6

$ vsql -F $'\t' -At -c "SELECT * FROM testtable;"
A       1       2       3
B       4       5       6

$ vsql -F $'\v' -At -c "SELECT * FROM testtable;"
A
 1
  2
   3
B
 4
  5
   6
$ vsql -F $'\013' -At -c "SELECT * FROM testtable;"
A
 1
  2
   3
B
 4
  5
   6