(mysql.info) command-line-options

 
 4.3.1 Using Options on the Command Line
 ---------------------------------------
 
 Program options specified on the command line follow these rules:
 
    * Options are given after the command name.
 
    * An option argument begins with one dash or two dashes, depending
      on whether it has a short name or a long name.  Many options have
      both forms. For example, -? and -help are the short and long forms
      of the option that instructs a MySQL program to display a help
      message.
 
    * Option names are case sensitive. -v and -V are both legal and have
      different meanings. (They are the corresponding short forms of the
      -verbose and -version options.)
 
    * Some options take a value following the option name. For example,
      -h localhost or -host=localhost indicate the MySQL server host to
      a client program. The option value tells the program the name of
      the host where the MySQL server is running.
 
    * For a long option that takes a value, separate the option name and
      the value by an ‘`='’ sign. For a short option that takes a
      value, the option value can immediately follow the option letter,
      or there can be a space between: -hlocalhost and -h localhost are
      equivalent. An exception to this rule is the option for specifying
      your MySQL password. This option can be given in long form as
      -password=PASS_VAL or as -password. In the latter case (with no
      password value given), the program prompts you for the password.
      The password option also may be given in short form as -pPASS_VAL
      or as -p. However, for the short form, if the password value is
      given, it must follow the option letter with _no intervening
      space_. The reason for this is that if a space follows the option
      letter, the program has no way to tell whether a following
      argument is supposed to be the password value or some other kind of
      argument. Consequently, the following two commands have two
      completely different meanings:
 
           shell> mysql -ptest
           shell> mysql -p test
 
      The first command instructs `mysql' to use a password value of
      `test', but specifies no default database. The second instructs
      `mysql' to prompt for the password value and to use `test' as the
      default database.
 
 Some options control behavior that can be turned on or off. For
 example, the `mysql' client supports a -column-names option that
 determines whether or not to display a row of column names at the
 beginning of query results. By default, this option is enabled.
 However, you may want to disable it in some instances, such as when
 sending the output of `mysql' into another program that expects to see
 only data and not an initial header line.
 
 To disable column names, you can specify the option using any of these
 forms:
 
      --disable-column-names
      --skip-column-names
      --column-names=0
 
 The -disable and -skip prefixes and the `=0' suffix all have the same
 effect: They turn the option off.
 
 The `enabled' form of the option may be specified in any of these ways:
 
      --column-names
      --enable-column-names
      --column-names=1
 
 If an option is prefixed by -loose, a program does not exit with an
 error if it does not recognize the option, but instead issues only a
 warning:
 
      shell> mysql --loose-no-such-option
      mysql: WARNING: unknown option '--no-such-option'
 
 The -loose prefix can be useful when you run programs from multiple
 installations of MySQL on the same machine and list options in an
 option file, An option that may not be recognized by all versions of a
 program can be given using the -loose prefix (or `loose' in an option
 file). Versions of the program that recognize the option process it
 normally, and versions that do not recognize it issue a warning and
 ignore it.
 
 Another option that may occasionally be useful with `mysql' is the
 -execute or -e option, which can be used to pass SQL statements to the
 server. The statements must be enclosed by single or double quotation
 marks. If you wish to use quoted values within a statement, you should
 use double quotes for the statement, and single quotes for any quoted
 values within the statement. When this option is used, `mysql' executes
 the statements and exits.
 
 For example, you can use the following command to obtain a list of user
 accounts:
 
      shell> mysql -u root -p --execute="SELECT User, Host FROM user" mysql
      Enter password: ******
      +------+-----------+
      | User | Host      |
      +------+-----------+
      |      | gigan     |
      | root | gigan     |
      |      | localhost |
      | jon  | localhost |
      | root | localhost |
      +------+-----------+
      shell>
 
 Note that the long form (-execute) must be followed by an equals sign
 (`=').
 
 In the preceding example, the name of the `mysql' database was passed
 as a separate argument. However, the same statement could have been
 executed using this command, which specifies no default database:
 
      mysql> mysql -u root -p --execute="SELECT User, Host FROM mysql.user"
 
 Multiple SQL statements may be passed on the command line, separated by
 semicolons:
 
      shell> mysql -u root -p -e "SELECT VERSION();SELECT NOW()"
      Enter password: ******
      +------------+
      | VERSION()  |
      +------------+
      | 5.0.19-log |
      +------------+
      +---------------------+
      | NOW()               |
      +---------------------+
      | 2006-01-05 21:19:04 |
      +---------------------+
 
 The -execute or -e option may also be used to pass commands in an
 analogous fashion to the `ndb_mgm' management client for MySQL Cluster.
 See  multi-shutdown-restart, for an example.
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