(mysql.info.gz) Command-line options

 
 4.3.1 Using Options on the Command Line
 ---------------------------------------
 
 Program options specified on the command line follow these rules:
 
    * Options are given after the command name.
 
    * An option argument begins with one dash or two dashes, depending
      on whether it has a short name or a long name. Many options have
      both forms.  For example, `-?' and `--help' are the short and long
      forms of the option that instructs a MySQL program to display a
      help message.
 
    * Option names are case sensitive.  `-v' and `-V' are both legal and
      have different meanings. (They are the corresponding short forms
      of the `--verbose' and `--version' options.)
 
    * Some options take a value following the option name.  For example,
      `-h localhost' or `--host=localhost' indicate the MySQL server
      host to a client program.  The option value tells the program the
      name of the host where the MySQL server is running.
 
    * For a long option that takes a value, separate the option name and
      the value by an `=' sign.  For a short option that takes a value,
      the option value can immediately follow the option letter, or
      there can be a space between.  (`-hlocalhost' and `-h localhost'
      are equivalent.)  An exception to this rule is the option for
      specifying your MySQL password.  This option can be given in long
      form as `--password=pass_val' or as `--password'. In the latter
      case (with no password value given), the program will prompt you
      for the password.  The password option also may be given in short
      form as `-ppass_val' or as `-p'. However, for the short form, if
      the password value is given, it must follow the option letter with
      _no intervening space_. The reason for this is that if a space
      follows the option letter, the program has no way to tell whether
      a following argument is supposed to be the password value or some
      other kind of argument.  Consequently, the following two commands
      have two completely different meanings:
 
           shell> mysql -ptest
           shell> mysql -p test
 
      The first command instructs `mysql' to use a password value of
      `test', but specifies no default database.  The second instructs
      `mysql' to prompt for the password value and to use `test' as the
      default database.
 
 
 MySQL 4.0 introduced some additional flexibility in the way you specify
 options. These changes were made in MySQL 4.0.2. Some of them relate to
 the way you specify options that have "enabled" and "disabled" states,
 and to the use of options that might be present in one version of MySQL
 but not another.  Those capabilities are discussed in this section.
 Another change pertains to the way you use options to set program
 variables.   Program variables discusses that topic further.
 
 Some options control behavior that can be turned on or off. For example,
 the `mysql' client supports a `--column-names' option that determines
 whether or not to display a row of column names at the beginning of
 query results. By default, this option is enabled. However, you may
 want to disable it in some instances, such as when sending the output
 of `mysql' into another program that expects to see only data and not
 an initial header line.
 
 To disable column names, you can specify the option using any of these
 forms:
 
      --disable-column-names
      --skip-column-names
      --column-names=0
 
 The `--disable' and `--skip' prefixes and the `=0' suffix all have the
 same effect: They turn the option off.
 
 The "enabled" form of the option may be specified in any of these ways:
 
      --column-names
      --enable-column-names
      --column-names=1
 
 Another change to option processing introduced in MySQL 4.0 is that you
 can use the `--loose' prefix for command-line options. If an option is
 prefixed by `--loose', the program will not exit with an error if it
 does not recognize the option, but instead will issue only a warning:
 
      shell> mysql --loose-no-such-option
      mysql: WARNING: unknown option '--no-such-option'
 
 The `--loose' prefix can be useful when you run programs from multiple
 installations of MySQL on the same machine, at least if all the
 versions are as recent as 4.0.2.  This prefix is particularly useful
 when you list options in an option file.  An option that may not be
 recognized by all versions of a program can be given using the `--loose'
 prefix (or `loose' in an option file). Versions of the program that do
 not recognize the option will issue a warning and ignore it. This
 strategy requires that versions involved be 4.0.2 or later, because
 earlier versions know nothing of the `--loose' convention.
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(mysql.info.gz) Program Options
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