Apache Hive : LanguageManual Commands

Commands are non-SQL statements such as setting a property or adding a resource. They can be used in HiveQL scripts or directly in the CLI or Beeline.

Command	Description
quit exit	Use quit or exit to leave the interactive shell.
reset	Resets the configuration to the default values (as of Hive 0.10: see HIVE-3202). Any configuration parameters that were set using the set command or -hiveconf parameter in hive commandline will get reset to default value.Note that this does not apply to configuration parameters that were set in set command using the “hiveconf:” prefix for the key name (for historic reasons).
set =	Sets the value of a particular configuration variable (key). Note: If you misspell the variable name, the CLI will not show an error.
set	Prints a list of configuration variables that are overridden by the user or Hive.
set -v	Prints all Hadoop and Hive configuration variables.
add FILE[S] * add JAR[S] * add ARCHIVE[S] *	Adds one or more files, jars, or archives to the list of resources in the distributed cache. See Hive Resources for more information.
add FILE[S] * add JAR[S]  * add ARCHIVE[S] *	As of Hive 1.2.0, adds one or more files, jars or archives to the list of resources in the distributed cache using an Ivy URL of the form ivy://group:module:version?query_string. See Hive Resources for more information.
list FILE[S] list JAR[S] list ARCHIVE[S]	Lists the resources already added to the distributed cache. See Hive Resources for more information.
list FILE[S] * list JAR[S] * list ARCHIVE[S] *	Checks whether the given resources are already added to the distributed cache or not. See Hive Resources for more information.
delete FILE[S] * delete JAR[S] * delete ARCHIVE[S] *	Removes the resource(s) from the distributed cache.
delete FILE[S] * delete JAR[S] * delete ARCHIVE[S] *	As of Hive 1.2.0, removes the resource(s) which were added using the from the distributed cache. See Hive Resources for more information.
!	Executes a shell command from the Hive shell.
dfs	Executes a dfs command from the Hive shell.
	Executes a Hive query and prints results to standard output.
source FILE	Executes a script file inside the CLI.
compile <groovy string> AS GROOVY NAMED	This allows inline Groovy code to be compiled and be used as a UDF (as of Hive 0.13.0). For a usage example, see Nov. 2013 Hive Contributors Meetup Presentations – Using Dynamic Compilation with Hive.
show processlist	Displays information about the operations currently running on HiveServer2. It helps to troubleshoot issues such as long running queries, connection starvation, etc. The command was introduced in HIVE-27829.

Sample Usage:

  hive> set mapred.reduce.tasks=32;
  hive> set;
  hive> select a.* from tab1;
  hive> !ls;
  hive> dfs -ls;

  hive> show processlist;
+------------+------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------+--------------------------+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------+---------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
| User Name  |  Ip Addr   | Execution Engine  |              Session Id               | Session Active Time (s)  | Session Idle Time (s)  |                      Query ID                      |  State   | Txn ID  |   Opened Timestamp (s)   | Elapsed Time (s)  |  Runtime (s)  |
+------------+------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------+--------------------------+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------+---------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+
| anonymous  | 127.0.0.1  | tez               | fb33f25e-bc8f-42f4-9ed2-28ca3ea55806  | 3                        | 1                      | tarak_20251113120712_e9a91156-c8fa-401d-9ab9-b44444c6768d | RUNNING  | 527     | 2025-11-13 12:07:12.571  | 1                 | Not finished  |
| anonymous  | 127.0.0.1  | tez               | 24c029d3-cfa3-43ae-966c-a262b3f0d323  | 3                        | 1                      | tarak_20251113120712_ff6524ff-2e12-4d36-803a-e1425ec18e60 | RUNNING  | 528     | 2025-11-13 12:07:12.579  | 1                 | Not finished  |
+------------+------------+-------------------+---------------------------------------+--------------------------+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------+----------+---------+--------------------------+-------------------+---------------+