Dumping Data in Delimited-Text Format with mysqldump Alternatively, from within  mysql , create the database, select it as the default database, and load the dump file: For Windows PowerShell users: Because the "<" character is reserved for future use in PowerShell, an alternative approach is required, such as using quotes cmd.exe /c "mysql < dump.sql" . This section describes how to use  mysqldump  to create delimited-text dump files. For information about reloading such dump files, see Section 7.4.4, “Reloading Delimited-Text Format Backups” . If you invoke  mysqldump  with the  --tab= dir_name  option, it uses  dir_name  as the output directory and dumps tables individually in that directory using two files for each table. The table name is the base name for these files. For a table named  t1 , the files are named  t1.sql  and  t1.txt . The  .sql  file contains a CREATE TABLE  statement for the table. The  .txt  file contains the table data, one line per table row. The following command dumps the contents of the  db1  database to files in the  /tmp  database: The  .txt  files containing table data are written by the server, so they are owned by the system account used for running the server. The server uses  SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE  to write the files, so you must have the  FILE  privilege to perform this operation, and an error occurs if a given  .txt  file already exists. The server sends the  CREATE  definitions for dumped tables to  mysqldump , which writes them to  .sql files. These files therefore are owned by the user who executes  mysqldump . It is best that  --tab  be used only for dumping a local server. If you use it with a remote server, the  -- tab  directory must exist on both the local and remote hosts, and the  .txt  files are written by the server in the remote directory (on the server host), whereas the  .sql  files are written by  mysqldump  in the local directory (on the client host). For  mysqldump --tab , the server by default writes table data to  .txt  files one line per row with tabs between column values, no quotation marks around column values, and newline as the line terminator. (These are the same defaults as for  SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE .) To enable data files to be written using a different format,  mysqldump  supports these options: The string for separating column values (default: tab). The character within which to enclose column values (default: no character). The character within which to enclose non-numeric column values (default: no character). 1623 • --fields-terminated-by= str • --fields-enclosed-by= char • --fields-optionally-enclosed-by= char • --fields-escaped-by= char shell>  mysqldump --tab=/tmp db1 mysql>  CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS db1; mysql>  USE db1; mysql>  source dump.sql Note 7.4.3 Dumping Data in Delimited-Text Format with mysqldump