Editing Using mysqldump (section)

=== Workaround to select tables with a wildcard ===

Wildcards aren't supported by `mysqldump`. Each table has to be listed. 

Put the table names in a file with: 

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash" enclose="div">
$ mysql -u [username] -p [password] -N information_schema -e "SELECT table_name FROM tables WHERE table_schema LIKE '[source_schema]' AND table_name LIKE '[table_pattern_]%'" > tables.txt 
</syntaxhighlight>

Edit the file to put all the table names into a single line. 

* Edit the file with `vim`.
* In `vim`, <kbd>J</kbd> will join the current line with the next line. <kbd>[n]J</kbd> joins the next ''n'' lines together, e.g. <kbd>3J</kbd>.

Then the file can be used to specify the table names: 

<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">
$ mysqldump --user=[username] --password=[password] [source_schema] `cat tables.txt` > dump_file.sql
</syntaxhighlight>

Optionally, edit `dump_file.sql` to change table names:

:Search & replace with `vim`: 
:<kbd>:s\foo\bar\g</kbd> will change occurrences of "foo" to "bar" on the current line only.
:<kbd>:%s\foo\bar\g</kbd> will change all occurrences of "foo" to "bar"
:<kbd>:%s\foo\bar\gc</kbd> will change all occurrences of "foo" to "bar" with confirmation for each occurrence.

Connect to the schema and import the data from the dump file:
<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">
$ mysql --user=[username] --password=[password] [destination_schema]

mysql> source dump_file.sql
</syntaxhighlight>

[http://zetcode.com/databases/mysqltutorial/exportimport/ Exporting and Importing MySQL Data] documents some alternative methods for importing and exporting.