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 <key>=<value>

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] <filepath> <filepath>*
add JAR[S] <filepath> <filepath>*
add ARCHIVE[S] <filepath> <filepath>*

Adds one or more files, jars, or archives to the list of resources in the distributed cache. 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] <filepath>*
list JAR[S] <filepath>*
list ARCHIVE[S] <filepath>*

Checks whether the given resources are already added to the distributed cache or not. See Hive Resources for more information.

delete FILE[S] <filepath>*
delete JAR[S] <filepath>*
delete ARCHIVE[S] <filepath>*

Removes the resource(s) from the distributed cache.

! <command>

Executes a shell command from the Hive shell.

dfs <dfs command>

Executes a dfs command from the Hive shell.

<query string>

Executes a Hive query and prints results to standard output.

source FILE <filepath>

Executes a script file inside the CLI.

compile `<groovy string>` AS GROOVY NAMED <name>

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 .