How do you mysqldump specific table(s)?

If you are dumping tables t1, t2, and t3 from mydb

mysqldump -u... -p... mydb t1 t2 t3 > mydb_tables.sql

If you have a ton of tables in mydb and you want to dump everything except t1, t2, and t3, do this:

DBTODUMP=mydb
SQL="SET group_concat_max_len = 10240;"
SQL="${SQL} SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(table_name separator ' ')"
SQL="${SQL} FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema='${DBTODUMP}'"
SQL="${SQL} AND table_name NOT IN ('t1','t2','t3')"
TBLIST=`mysql -u... -p... -AN -e"${SQL}"`
mysqldump -u... -p... ${DBTODUMP} ${TBLIST} > mydb_tables.sql

Give it a Try !!!

UPDATE 2014-03-06 10:15 EST

@RoryDonohue pointed out to me that the GROUP_CONCAT function needs to have its max length extended. I added the session variable group_concat_max_len to my answer with a length max of 10K. Thanks, @RoryDonohue.

A note to expand on the answer by RolandoMySQLDBA.

The script he included is a great approach for including (and table_name in) or excluding (and table_name NOT in) a list of tables.

If you just need to exclude one or two tables, you can exclude them individually with the --ignore-table option:

mysqldump -u -p etc. --ignore-table=Database.Table1 --ignore-table=Database.Table2 > dump_file.sql

When you have more than a few tables it is much better running something like this:

mysql databasename -u [user] -p[password] -e 'show tables like "table_name_%"' 
       | grep -v Tables_in 
       | xargs mysqldump [databasename] -u [root] -p [password] > [target_file]

Or somethink like this:

mysqldump -u [user] -p[password] databasename `echo "show tables like 'table_name_%';" 
       | mysql -u[user] -p[password] databasename 
       | sed '/Tables_in/d'` > [target_file]

Remember that those commands must be typed in one line only.