MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Mixing Command-Line and Option File Parameters

Problem

You’d rather not store your MySQL password in an option file, but you don’t want to enter your username and server host manually.

Solution

Put the username and host in the option file, but not the password. Instead, specify the password interactively when you invoke the mysql program. mysql looks both in the option file and on the command line for connection parameters. If an option is specified in both places, the one on the command line takes precedence.

Discussion

mysql first reads your option file to see what connection parameters are listed there, and then checks the command line for additional parameters. This means you can specify some options one way, and some the other way. For example, you can list your username and hostname in an option file, but use a password option on the command line:

%mysql -p
Enter password:        ← enter your password here

Command-line parameters take precedence over parameters found in your option file, so if for some reason you need to override an option file parameter, just specify it on the command line. For example, you might list your regular MySQL username and password in the option file for general-purpose use. If you need to connect on occasion as the MySQL root user, specify the user and password options on the command line to override the option file values:

%mysql -p -u root
Enter password:        ← enter MySQL root account password here

To explicitly specify “no password” when there is a nonempty ...