Output formats and exit codes

arcli is built to be piped. The rules below hold for every command so a script can rely on them.

stdout and stderr

• stdout carries the result: the table, the JSON or CSV document, the Arrow stream, or a one-line confirmation such as OK or Deleted database "staging".
• stderr carries everything else: Error: … lines, warnings (TLS disabled, a query that looks wrong), progress while --wait polls, confirmation prompts, and the reminders that follow a freshly printed secret.

The two commands that print a token secret, auth token create and auth token rotate, print only the secret on stdout, so $(…) captures it cleanly.

Output formats

Select with -o / --output. Which formats a command offers depends on what it returns:

Timestamps in tables are RFC 3339 in UTC. -o json never reformats them. The config commands take no -o: they only touch the local file.

Exit codes

On 130 and 143 arcli prints interrupted; any operation already accepted by the server continues there and cancels the in-flight request; the server keeps going. A second Ctrl-C kills arcli outright.

Confirmation prompts

Destructive commands (db drop, config delete, delete, retention execute, retention delete, cq delete, backup restore, backup delete, auth token rotate|revoke|delete, cluster node remove) ask … [y/N] on stderr. The default is always no: anything but y or yes ends with Error: aborted and exit 1. When stdin is not a terminal (a pipe, a file, /dev/null) the prompt is refused with Error: confirmation required but stdin is not a terminal; pass --yes, again exit 1, and the command does nothing; pass --yes (-y) to proceed without asking. There is no way to make the default yes.

Before arcli 26.09.2, db drop and config delete printed Aborted. and exited 0 on a declined or non-terminal prompt.

Patterns

# JSON for jq
arcli query -o json "SELECT host, max(usage) AS m FROM cpu GROUP BY 1" | jq -r '.data[] | @tsv'

# CSV straight into a file
arcli query -o csv "SELECT * FROM cpu WHERE time > now() - INTERVAL 1 DAY" > cpu-24h.csv

# A token for a pipeline, captured without the reminder
TOKEN=$(arcli auth token create --name telegraf --permission write 2>/dev/null)

# Fail a CI job if the server or the token is bad
arcli ping >/dev/null || exit 1

# Non-interactive destructive command
arcli delete --database metrics --measurement cpu --where "host = 'retired-1'" --yes

Verbose, human-facing output never includes a token; arcli redacts them everywhere but the two secret-printing commands.