lint

Lint SQL files via passing a list of files or using stdin.

PATH is the path to a sql file or directory to lint. This can be either a file (path/to/file.sql), a path (directory/of/sql/files), a single (-) character to indicate reading from stdin or a dot/blank (./) which will be interpreted like passing the current working directory as a path argument.

Linting SQL files:

sqlfluff lint path/to/file.sql
sqlfluff lint directory/of/sql/files

Linting a file via stdin (note the lone - character):

cat path/to/file.sql | sqlfluff lint -
echo `select col from tbl` | sqlfluff lint -

Usage

sqlfluff lint [OPTIONS] [paths]

Arguments

Argument	Description
paths

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
-n, --nocolor	Boolean	—	No color - output will be without ANSI color codes.
-v, --verbose	Integer	—	Verbosity, how detailed should the output be. This is stackable, so -vv is more verbose than -v. For the most verbose option try -vvvv or -vvvvv.
--version	Boolean	false	Show the version and exit.
--stdin-filename	Path	—	When using stdin as an input, load the configuration as if the contents of stdin was in a file in the listed location. This is useful for some editors that pass file contents from the editor that might not match the content on disk.
--library-path	String	—	Override the library_path value from the [sqlfluff:templater:jinja] configuration value. Set this to none to disable entirely. This overrides any values set by users in configuration files or inline directives.
--disable-noqa-except	String	—	Ignore all but the listed rules inline noqa comments.
--disable-noqa	Boolean	—	Set this flag to ignore inline noqa comments.
--logger	Choice (6 options)	Sentinel.UNSET	Choose to limit the logging to one of the loggers.
--bench	Boolean	false	Set this flag to engage the benchmarking tool output.
-i, --ignore	String	—	Ignore particular families of errors so that they dont cause a failed run. For example --ignore parsing would mean that any parsing errors are ignored and dont influence the success or fail of a run. --ignore behaves somewhat like noqa comments, except it applies globally. Multiple options are possible if comma separated: e.g. --ignore parsing,templating.
--encoding	String	—	Specify encoding to use when reading and writing files. Defaults to autodetect.
--ignore-local-config	Boolean	false	Ignore config files in default search path locations. This option allows the user to lint with the default config or can be used in conjunction with --config to only reference the custom config file.
--config	Path	—	Include additional config file. By default the config is generated from the standard configuration files described in the documentation. This argument allows you to specify an additional configuration file that overrides the standard configuration files. N.B. cfg format is required.
-e, --exclude-rules	String	—	Exclude specific rules. For example specifying --exclude-rules LT01 will remove rule LT01 (Unnecessary trailing whitespace) from the set of considered rules. This could either be the allowlist, or the general set if there is no specific allowlist. Multiple rules can be specified with commas e.g. --exclude-rules LT01,LT02 will exclude violations of rule LT01 and rule LT02.
-r, --rules	String	—	Narrow the search to only specific rules. For example specifying --rules LT01 will only search for rule LT01 (Unnecessary trailing whitespace). Multiple rules can be specified with commas e.g. --rules LT01,LT02 will specify only looking for violations of rule LT01 and rule LT02.
-t, --templater	Choice: raw, jinja, python, placeholder	—	The templater to use (default=jinja)
-d, --dialect	String	—	The dialect of SQL to lint
--disregard-sqlfluffignores	Boolean	false	Perform the operation regardless of .sqlfluffignore configurations
--warn-unused-ignores	Boolean	false	Warn about unneeded -- noqa: comments.
--persist-timing	String	—	A filename to persist the timing information for a linting run to in csv format for external analysis. NOTE: This feature should be treated as beta, and the format of the csv file may change in future releases without warning.
--disable-progress-bar	Boolean	false	Disables progress bars.
-p, --processes	Integer	—	The number of parallel processes to run. Positive numbers work as expected. Zero and negative numbers will work as number_of_cpus - number. e.g -1 means all cpus except one. 0 means all cpus.
-f, --format	Choice (7 options)	human	What format to return the lint result in (default=human).
--write-output	String	Sentinel.UNSET	Optionally provide a filename to write the results to, mostly used in tandem with --format. NB: Setting an output file re-enables normal stdout logging.
--annotation-level	Choice: notice, warning, failure, error	warning	When format is set to "github-annotation" or "github-annotation-native", default annotation level (default="warning"). "failure" and "error" are equivalent. Any rules configured only as warnings will always come through with type "notice" regardless of this option.
--nofail	Boolean	false	If set, the exit code will always be zero, regardless of violations found. This is potentially useful during rollout.
--recursion-limit	Integer	—	Set the Python recursion limit before linting.