All MySQL clients that communicate with the server using the mysqlclient library use the following environment variables:
Name | Description |
MYSQL_UNIX_PORT | The default socket; used for connections to localhost |
MYSQL_TCP_PORT | The default TCP/IP port |
MYSQL_PWD | The default password |
MYSQL_DEBUG | Debug-trace options when debugging |
TMPDIR | The directory where temporary tables/files are created |
Use of MYSQL_PWD is insecure. See Connecting.
On Unix, the mysql client uses the file named in the MYSQL_HISTFILE environment variable to save the command-line history. The default value for the history file is $HOME/.mysql_history, where $HOME is the value of the HOME environment variable. See Environment variables.
If you do not want to maintain a file that contains a record of your queries, first remove .mysql_history if it exists, then use either of the following techniques:
Set the MYSQL_HISTFILE variable to /dev/null. To cause this setting to take effect each time you log in, put the setting in one of your shell's startup files.
Create .mysql_histfile as a symbolic link to /dev/null:
shell> ln -s /dev/null $HOME/.mysql_history
You need do this only once.
All MySQL programs take many different options. However, every MySQL program provides a --help option that you can use to get a full description of the program's different options. For example, try mysql --help.
You can override default options for all standard programs by specifying options on the command line or in an option file. Program Options.
The following list briefly describes the MySQL client programs and utilities:
msql2mysql | A shell script that converts mSQL programs to MySQL. It doesn't handle all cases, but it gives a good start when converting. |
mysql | The command-line tool for interactively entering queries or executing queries from a file in batch mode. See mysql. |
mysqlcc | This program provides a graphical interface for interacting with the server. See mysqlcc. |
mysqlaccess | A script that checks the access privileges for a host, user, and database combination. |
mysqladmin | Utility for performing administrative operations, such as creating or dropping databases, reloading the grant tables, flushing tables to disk, and reopening log files. mysqladmin can also be used to retrieve version, process, and status information from the server. See mysqladmin. |
mysqlbinlog | Utility for reading queries from a binary log. Can be used to recover from a crash with an old backup. See mysqlbinlog. |
mysqldump | Dumps a MySQL database into a file as SQL statements or as tab-separated text files. Enhanced freeware originally by Igor Romanenko. See mysqldump. |
mysqlimport | Imports text files into their respective tables using LOAD DATA INFILE. See mysqlimport. |
mysqlshow | Displays information about databases, tables, columns, and indexes. |
replace |
A utility program that is used by msql2mysql, but that has more
general applicability as well. replace changes strings in place in
files or on the standard input. Uses a finite state machine to match longer
strings first. Can be used to swap strings. For example, this command
swaps a and b in the given files:
shell> replace a b b a -- file1 file2 ... |