How to make a Bash insert script for MySQL

Question

I've been trying for two days to make a simple script which feeds an argument (a query) to mysql -e for it to execute. But I can't use mysql -e inside the script for some reason, here are my testings :

I can run the following line in my bash with success :

mysql -u abrouze -p simubase -e "insert into Processing values(1,2,3,'coca cola')"

It might be important to note that I need to pass full strings with whitespaces in the values.

Now, here is my script :

#!/bin/bash
req="\"$1\""
echo $req
mysql -u abrouze -p simubase -e $req

Escaping quotes here so $req is really surrounded by quotes, and it doesn't work.

Trace :

brouze@lasb-ida:~$ ./myrage.sh "insert into Processing values(1,2,3,'huge bear')"
"insert into Processing values(1,2,3,'huge bear')"

mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.35, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.2
Copyright (c) 2000, 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Following this, the help wall-of-text.

It seems absolutely trivial to me, I absolutely don't know how it would not work...

echo ${req} | mysql... maybe? Your quotes are all wrong. There should not be quotes in the string, they should be around the string. So req=$1 and then use "${req}". — Boris the Spider
– Boris the Spider, Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 10:45
As you said req=$1,echo ${req} | mysql... works. More simply, echo $1 | mysql... works too. As for why quotes inside the string is not the same as outside the string, I suppose it's because of Bash's behavior on parsing strings based on the quoting used. — callisto
– callisto, Commented Apr 10, 2014 at 14:52

Josh Jolly · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-10 11:07:34Z

1

You can use a heredoc for this, have your script be:

#!/bin/bash
mysql -u abrouze -p simubase << EOF
$1
EOF

Then call your script as before:

./myrage.sh "insert into Processing values(1,2,3,'huge bear');"

answered Apr 10, 2014 at 11:07

Josh Jolly

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1 Comment

callisto Over a year ago

Thanks, it works. I would like to understand the mechanic though. Since I had provided the exact same string "insert into..." to mysql, why did that not work ?

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