MySQL Cookbook

Specifying Queries on the Command Line

Problem

You want to specify a query directly on the command line for mysql to execute.

Solution

mysql can read a query from its argument list. Use the -e (or --execute) option to specify a query on the command line.

Discussion

For example, to find out how many records are in the limbs table, run this command:

% mysql -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM limbs" cookbook
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|       12 |
+----------+

To run multiple queries with the -e option, separate them with semicolons:

% mysql -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM limbs;SELECT NOW( )" cookbook
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|       12 |
+----------+
+---------------------+
| NOW( )               |
+---------------------+
| 2001-07-04 10:42:22 |
+---------------------+

See Also

By default, results generated by queries that are specified with -e are displayed in tabular format if output goes to the terminal, and in tab-delimited format otherwise. To produce a different output style, see Recipe 1.22.