MySQL: Show list of tables with paging in Terminal
You can use the pager (see docs) command in MySQL console or use the --pager startup option (docs again) to redirect the output of your commands to an external executable.

To use the pager command and list the tables try this:

mysql&gt; pager less
mysql&gt; show tables


You can also start MySQL to send all your output to an external executable like this

mysql --pager=/usr/bin/less