This article is part of Robert Sheldon’s continuing series on Learning MySQL. To see all of the items in the series, click here.
In the previous article in this series, I introduced you to the MySQL LOAD DATA statement, which lets you retrieve data from a plain text file and insert it into a table. In this article, I cover the SELECT…INTO OUTFILE statement, a type of SELECT statement that includes the INTO OUTFILE clause. The clause lets you export data from one or more MySQL tables into a plain text file, providing a counterpart to the LOAD DATA statement.