How to suppress hyphens in SQLCMD

The only thing I can think of is removing the header using the -h -1 switch and adding the column names as the first row to the SQL Query:

SELECT 'FirstName' as FirstName, 'LastName' as LastName
UNION
SELECT top 5 FirstName, LastName FROM Person.Contact

Note that if there are other data types then (var)char, you need to convert the field using : CAST(MyColumnName AS varchar(32)) as MyColumnName

That's it!

How can I supress hyphens (------------) from the results set of this sqlcmd command:

You can do it all in a simple way in 1 command, without any script or file manipulation!!

sqlcmd -d AdventureWorks -s ";" -Q "SET NOCOUNT ON; SELECT top 5 FirstName, LastName FROM Person.Contact" |findstr /v /c:"---"

Add set nocount on; to remove the (X rows affected) line. Add |findstr /v /c:"---" to remove the underlines. This way you get a clean answer, with only:

FirstName                                         ;LastName
Gustavo                                           ;Achong
Catherine                                         ;Abel
Kim                                               ;Abercrombie
Humberto                                          ;Acevedo
Pilar                                             ;Ackerman

I didn't see all this info in once place and thought the next person looking for it might appreciate it...

use the -h -1 option to remove the dashes (--------) from the output and SET NOCOUNT ON to remove the "rows affected". This is great if you're creating a report or CSV file for another system to process.

Example:

SQLCMD -S 127.0.0.1\SQL_SERVER_Instance -d db_name -U db_login -P password -i your_script.sql -o your_output.csv -h -1

In your SQL script:

SET NOCOUNT ON -- removes (rows affected from the output)
select 'your_column_1, your_column_2'
select * from your_table

You don't need to use a union between your select statements for this.