Use MySQL command line client to connect to a MySQL instance

Assume we have a MySQL database running on localhost. We have a user called user, and a database called test.

Here’s how to use the command line client to connect to that database.

mysql --password --user user --database test --host 127.0.0.1 --port 3306

The --password prompts for the password to --user. The default MySQL port is 3306, so we can elide the --port. We can also use undocumented short options, and it becomes this:

mysql -p -u test --database test -h 127.0.0.1