For some reason, the unicode \u003B translates to ) for me. Beeline version 1.1.0-cdh5.13.3 by Apache Hive 0: jdbc:hive2://gbrdsr000002995.intranet.barc> select '\u003B' as col; +------+--+ | col | +------+--+ | ) | +------+--+ I have tried "\u0059" instead to replace semicolon (;) which works for me 0: jdbc:hive2://gbrdsr000002995.intranet.barc> select '\u0059' as col; +------+--+ | col | +------+--+ | ; | +------+--+ ... View more