Let’s say I want to run a stored procedure in an isql session and then send the result set via mail:

isql -S -U -P
1> set nocount on
2> exec PSTEST 'F', 7
3> go
 x y
 - -----------
 A           1
 F           7
 Z           9
(return status = 0)

but then you get this “(return status = 0) which is not that nice. So for some time I’ve been using grep -v “return status” or sed on the result file to remove the unwanted line until I’ve found out that you can actually disable printing of the return status with a nice command:

set proc_return_status off

Here’s the result set with this parameter turned off:

isql -S -U -P
1> set nocount on
2> set proc_return_status off
3> go
1> exec PSTEST 'F', 7
2> go
 x y
 - -----------
 A           1
 F           7
 Z           9

Quoting the documentation:

proc_return_status
controls sending of a return status TDS token back to the client. set proc_return_status off suppresses sending the return status token to the client, and isql client does not display the (return status = 0) message. The default for this parameter is on.