If you just need a quick way to get some data from a mysql database in your shell (bash), you could do something like this in one line:

mysql -h your.server.edu -u db_username -p`cat /path/to/your/homedir/secretpasswordfile` -e ";use databasename; SELECT tablename.columnname FROM tablename where id like '421111' and something like '1' and option like '23';"; > /tmp/datayouwant.txt; while read i; do echo ";$i";; done < /tmp/datayourwant.txt | sort | uniq

If you don't like to scroll:
-bash-3.2$ mysql -h your.server.edu -u db_username -p`cat /path/to/your/homedir/secretpasswordfile` -e "use databasename; SELECT tablename.columnname FROM tablename where id like '421111' and something like '1' and option like '23';" > /tmp/datayouwant.txt; while read i; do echo "$i"; done < /tmp/datayourwant.txt | sort | uniq

On my server I would then get a list of words/numbers or whatever you might have in the database, which one might want to use further in another script or command:

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