How do I insert a special character such as ' into MySQL?

Question

I am executing the insert query from a shell script which reads data from multiple files. Some of the data to be inserted contains \' in the text a

Answer 1

You need to escape the quote, like so:

'Women\'s Development & Empowerment, Youth Affairs'

Note, that if you're generating the SQL statement from a language like PHP, there are functions available to do this for you.

In PHP, for instance, there is mysql_real_escape_string, which takes care of it for you. Note, that prepared statements are to be prefered over this, as it's harder to get those wrong.

See also:

• The MySQL manual entry on strings
• PHP PDO prepared statements