title: Sqlite3 hidden formatting of columns
body: <p>I have already been researching this issue, but all the results only ever name sqlite's .width function, or refer to pragma and similar to find out hidden values.
  The problem is this: I have a database which I query in all kinds of ways under ".mode column", and ".headers on". The rule for the width of all columns seems to be either 10, or the length of the header of the column, depending on which is larger.(..this is true even when headers are not displayed)
  Now, some columns in -as about of now- 2 tables in the database have longer column widths, so they instead exactly match the length of the data (..instead of the header).</p>
  
  <p>For example I have a "date" column with obviously just 4 signs, so column width should default to 10, but instead it is expanded to 15 to fit the long date codes like "636363515212222".
  So I thought, maybe long integers expand this too, but then in another example I got "uuid" with mere text-strings as data, going up to 34 characters or so.</p>
  
  <p>Note, in basically every other example where there is text or even large integers (which I tested), the output of the data will simply be truncated to fit the column width, like</p>
  
  <p><code>SomeLongNames
  ..............
  "Herbert Wate</code></p>
  
  <p>I also tried to copy one of the long uuid-entries into another table, just to see if the width would adapt automatically with this form of input for some reason. It didn't, and the uuid got truncated.
  So the only conclusion left here is that the tables themselves harbor custom formatting for some of the columns, but I am completely unable to find those.
  I tried:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p>"schema(table)" does give the create table statement, but there are no signs of any additional formatting.</p></li>
  <li><p>"pragma table_info(table_name)" which does list the types, but no varchar (anywhere!) or something can be seen to explain any effect.</p></li>
  <li><p>"select * from sqlite_master" does a mixture of both others, but contains again nothing more.</p></li>
  <li><p>".width" doesn't give the option to specify column width only for certain tables, no matter the question where that information would even be stored, if I can't find it with the above commands.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>So my question now: How does this come to be? Somehow the tables must have ended up like this. Probably they were created in other sql types?(I am just analyzing the database to learn for a python programmed access)
  However, even in that case, sqlite must know somehow, so there must be some sort of formatting pointer in all of this. ...But where?</p>
  
  <p>I highly need this btw. to make python output look consistent when doing remote sql-queries. No way around this other than not touching those specific columns, which is cheap.</p>