Specifying Program Options • [ group ] • opt_name • opt_name = value group  is the name of the program or group for which you want to set options. After a group line, any option-setting lines apply to the named group until the end of the option file or another group line is given. Option group names are not case-sensitive. This is equivalent to  -- opt_name  on the command line. This is equivalent to  -- opt_name = value  on the command line. In an option file, you can have spaces around the  =  character, something that is not true on the command line. The value optionally can be enclosed within single quotation marks or double quotation marks, which is useful if the value contains a #  comment character. Leading and trailing spaces are automatically deleted from option names and values. You can use the escape sequences  \b ,  ,  ,  \r ,  \\ , and  \s  in option values to represent the backspace, tab, newline, carriage return, backslash, and space characters. In option files, these escaping rules apply: •A backslash followed by a valid escape sequence character is converted to the character represented by the sequence. For example,  \s  is converted to a space. •A backslash not followed by a valid escape sequence character remains unchanged. For example,  \S  is retained as is. The preceding rules mean that a literal backslash can be given as  \\ , or as  \  if it is not followed by a valid escape sequence character. The rules for escape sequences in option files differ slightly from the rules for escape sequences in string literals in SQL statements. In the latter context, if “ x ”  is not a valid escape sequence character,  \ x becomes “ x ”  rather than  \ x . See Section 9.1.1, “String Literals” . The escaping rules for option file values are especially pertinent for Windows path names, which use  \ as a path name separator. A separator in a Windows path name must be written as  \\  if it is followed by an escape sequence character. It can be written as  \\  or  \  if it is not. Alternatively,  /  may be used in Windows path names and is treated as  \ . Suppose that you want to specify a base directory of  C: \Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0  in an option file. This can be done several ways. Some examples: If an option group name is the same as a program name, options in the group apply specifically to that program. For example, the  [mysqld]  and  [mysql]  groups apply to the  mysqld  server and the  mysql client program, respectively. The  [client]  option group is read by all client programs provided in MySQL distributions (but  not  by mysqld ). To understand how third-party client programs that use the C API can use option files, see the C API documentation at mysql_options(). The  [client]  group enables you to specify options that apply to all clients. For example,  [client]  is the appropriate group to use to specify the password for connecting to the server. (But make sure that the option file is accessible only by yourself, so that other people cannot discover your password.) Be sure basedir="C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0" basedir="C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 8.0" basedir="C:/Program Files/MySQL/MySQL Server 8.0" basedir=C:\\Program\sFiles\\MySQL\\MySQL\sServer\s8.0 348