mysqldump and --tab speed

Question

according to the MySQL Certification Guide, when --tab option is used,

a SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE is used to generate a tab delimited file in the specified directory, a file containing SQL (CREATE TABLE) will also be generated

and that

using --tab to produce tab-delimited dump files is much faster

but how can it be faster if both generate a SQL file and the --tab 1 has an extra tab delimited 1?

Answer 1

I would say that :

• without using --tab, a file is generated, that contains both :
  • create statements
  • and data, as lots of insert statements
• with --tab, two files are generated :
  • one with create statements
  • one other with data, in a tab-delimited format, instead of insert statements

The difference is the second part :

• inserts
• vs tab-delimited

I'm guessing that creating lots of insert statements takes more time than just dumping data with a tab-delimited format -- maybe it's the same with importing the data back, too ?