bash/mysql complains about ) character

Question

I'm trying to execute this:

$ mysql --user=XXX --password=XXX --batch --skip-column-names \
 -e "SELECT userid, displayname FROM Users" stackoverflowdb | \
split -l 50 -a 5 - "result."

but bash complains about ) 'unexpected' character (i have this character and few other 'weird ones' in my mysql password). I tried to take my password in quotes --password="myweirdpasshere" but then mysql won't login me at all (probably password is incorrect?)

Answer 1

If you don't give the password on the command line, it will bring up an interactive prompt. That might solve your error. Just use -p instead of --password=XXX.

Of course, if you require unattended access to the script, that's not a very useful answer. It would be more helpful if you could create a minimal example and tell us the exact error that Bash gives you.

Answer 2

Some characters such as $, `, ", and sometimes \ retain their special meaning inside double quotes. If your password contains any of those characters, use single quotes instead. (Unless your password also contains single quotes, in which case you might just drop the quotes altogether and put a \ before each special character.)

Answer 3

You should be able to put the password in the $HOME/.my.cnf file, avoiding this issue as well as increasing the security.

Another option to using $HOME/.my.cnf is embedding the configuration file into the script. A comment on the documentation gives examples on this. For your case it should be:

$ mysql --user=XXX --defaults-file <(printf '[client]\npassword=XXX\n') \
--batch --skip-column-names \
-e "SELECT userid, displayname FROM Users" stackoverflowdb | \
split -l 50 -a 5 - "result."