How to find the mysql data directory from command line in windows

You can see the complete list of MySQL server options by running

mysqld --verbose --help

For example, to find out the path to the data directory on Linux, you can run:

mysqld --verbose --help | grep ^datadir

Example output:

datadir                                     /var/lib/mysql/

You can try this-

mysql> select @@datadir;

PS- It works on every platform.

You can issue the following query from the command line:

mysql -uUSER -p -e 'SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_Name LIKE "%dir"'

Output (on Linux):

+---------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name             | Value                      |
+---------------------------+----------------------------+
| basedir                   | /usr                       |
| character_sets_dir        | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
| datadir                   | /var/lib/mysql/            |
| innodb_data_home_dir      |                            |
| innodb_log_group_home_dir | ./                         |
| lc_messages_dir           | /usr/share/mysql/          |
| plugin_dir                | /usr/lib/mysql/plugin/     |
| slave_load_tmpdir         | /tmp                       |
| tmpdir                    | /tmp                       |
+---------------------------+----------------------------+

Output (on macOS Sierra):

+---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Variable_name             | Value                                                     |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| basedir                   | /usr/local/mysql-5.7.17-macos10.12-x86_64/                |
| character_sets_dir        | /usr/local/mysql-5.7.17-macos10.12-x86_64/share/charsets/ |
| datadir                   | /usr/local/mysql/data/                                    |
| innodb_data_home_dir      |                                                           |
| innodb_log_group_home_dir | ./                                                        |
| innodb_tmpdir             |                                                           |
| lc_messages_dir           | /usr/local/mysql-5.7.17-macos10.12-x86_64/share/          |
| plugin_dir                | /usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin/                              |
| slave_load_tmpdir         | /var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n000009800002_/T/         |
| tmpdir                    | /var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n000009800002_/T/         |
+---------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------+

Or if you want only the data dir use:

mysql -uUSER -p -e 'SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_Name = "datadir"'

These commands work on Windows too, but you need to invert the single and double quotes.

Btw, when executing which mysql in Linux as you told, you'll not get the installation directory on Linux. You'll only get the binary path, which is /usr/bin on Linux, but you see the mysql installation is using multiple folders to store files.

---

If you need the value of datadir as output, and only that, without column headers etc, but you don't have a GNU environment (awk|grep|sed ...) then use the following command line:

mysql -s -N -uUSER -p information_schema -e 'SELECT Variable_Value FROM GLOBAL_VARIABLES WHERE Variable_Name = "datadir"'

The command will select the value only from mysql's internal information_schema database and disables the tabular output and column headers.

Output on Linux:

/var/lib/mysql

if you want to find datadir in linux or windows you can do following command

mysql -uUSER -p -e 'SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_Name = "datadir"'

if you are interested to find datadir you can use grep & awk command

mysql -uUSER -p -e 'SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_Name = "datadir"' | grep 'datadir' | awk '{print $2}'