MySQL Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Using mysql in Shell Scripts

Problem

You want to invoke mysql from within a shell script rather than use it interactively.

Solution

There’s no rule against this. Just be sure to supply the appropriate arguments to the command.

Discussion

If you need to process query results within a program, you’ll typically use a MySQL programming interface designed specifically for the language you’re using (for example, in a Perl script, you use the DBI interface; see Recipe 2.1). But for simple, short, or quick-and-dirty tasks, it might be easier just to invoke mysql directly from within a shell script, possibly postprocessing the results with other commands. For example, an easy way to write a MySQL server status tester is to use a shell script that invokes mysql, as is demonstrated in this section. Shell scripts are also useful for prototyping programs that you intend to convert for use with a programming interface later.

For Unix shell scripting, I recommend that you stick to shells in the Bourne shell family, such as sh, bash, or ksh. (The csh and tcsh shells are more suited to interactive use than to scripting.) This section provides some examples showing how to write Unix scripts for /bin/sh, and comments briefly on Windows scripting.

See Appendix B if you need instructions for running programs from your command interpreter or for making sure that your PATH environment variable is set properly to tell your command interpreter which directories to search for installed programs.

The scripts ...