Question

The commandline option -e or –execute in mysql is used to execute commands in shell prompt itself. Is there a way to print an error if the query was not successful (if the number if output is zero?)
Just like

Empty set (0.89 sec)

Answer 1

mysql already prints out error messages by default. It also exits with an exit code larger than 0 if an error occured:

$ mysql -e "SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'version' THIS WON'T WORK"
ERROR 1064 (42000) at line 1: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'THIS WON'T WORK' at line 1
$ echo $?
1
$ mysql -e "SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'version'"
+---------------+------------+
| Variable_name | Value      |
+---------------+------------+
| version       | 5.5.19-log |
+---------------+------------+
$ echo $?
0