Syntax error when using SELECT INTO OUTFILE

Question

When I run the following query

SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/result.txt'
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
  FROM test_table;

which is straight from the MySQL documentation, I get a syntax error. I don't have a test_table table and I understand that this statement won't actually work, but it doesn't seem like it should give a syntax error. If I'm getting a syntax error on something straight from the MySQL documentation, what could be going on?

This is the doc I'm looking at (5.1): http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/select.html

This is my MySQL version:

mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.49, for debian-linux-gnu (i686) using readline 6.1

Answer 1

This code works for me.

At first I had an Unknown table 'test_table' in my_db error.

After creating the table CREATE TABLE test_table (a VARCHAR(255), b VARCHAR(255)) it just worked. No syntax error.

Edit:

Running the query from the official mysql command line client can avoid potential bugs in your GUI client and give more accurate error messages.

Answer 2

Maybe you have to escape some of the characters depending on the language you are using.

php example:

$sql = "SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/result.txt'"
    . " FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '\"'"
    . " LINES TERMINATED BY '\\n'"
    . " FROM test_table;";