How do I pass a variable to a mysql script?

Question

I know that with mysql you can write SQL statements into a .sql file and run the file from the mysql command line like this:

mysql> source script.sql

How do I pass a variable to the script? For example, if I want to run a script that retrieves all the employees in a department, I want to be able to pass in the number of the department as a variable.

I am not trying to run queries through a shell script. There are simple queries I run from the mysql command line. I'm tired of retyping them all the time, and writing a shell script for them would be overkill.

Answer 1

Like this:

set @department := 'Engineering';

Then, reference @department wherever you need to in script.sql:

update employee set salary = salary + 10000 where department = @department;

Answer 2

you really should be looking at a more appropriate way of doing this. i'm going to guess that you're trying to run mysql queries via a shell script. you should instead be using something like PERL or PHP.