MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Entering an SQL One-Liner

Problem

You want to specify a statement to be executed directly on the mysql command line.

Solution

mysql can read a statement from its argument list.

Discussion

To execute a statement directly from the command line, specify it using the -e (or --execute) option. For example, to find out how many rows are in the limbs table, run this command:

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

To execute multiple statements this way, separate them with semicolons:

%mysql -e "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM limbs;SELECT NOW()" cookbook
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|       12 |
+----------+
+---------------------+
| NOW()               |
+---------------------+
| 2006-07-04 10:42:22 |
+---------------------+

By default, results generated by statements that are specified with -e are displayed in tabular format if output goes to the terminal, and in tab-delimited format otherwise. To learn what these different formats are, see Sending Query Output to a File or to a Program. To choose a particular format, see Selecting Tabular or Tab-Delimited Query Output Format.