MySQL supports user variables as of version 3.23.6. You can store a value in a user-defined variable in one statement and then refer to it later in another statement. This enables you to pass values from one statement to another. User-defined variables are connection-specific. That is, a user variable defined by one client cannot be seen or used by other clients. All variables for a given client connection are automatically freed when that client exits.

User variables are written as @var_name, where the variable name var_name consists of alphanumeric characters from the current character set, “.”, “_”, and “$”. A user variable name can contain other characters if you quote it as a string or identifier (for example, @'my-var', @"my-var", or @`my-var`). The default character set is latin1 (cp1252 West European). This can be changed with the --default-character-set option to mysqld. See Section 9.6, “Character Set Configuration”.

User variable names are not case sensitive in MySQL 5.0 and up, but are case sensitive before MySQL 5.0.

One way to set a user-defined variable is by issuing a SET statement:

SET @var_name = expr [, @var_name = expr] ...

For SET, either = or := can be used as the assignment operator.

You can also assign a value to a user variable in statements other than SET. In this case, the assignment operator must be := and not = because the latter is treated as the comparison operator = in non-SET statements:

mysql> SET @t1=1, @t2=2, @t3:=4;
mysql> SELECT @t1, @t2, @t3, @t4 := @t1+@t2+@t3;
+------+------+------+--------------------+
| @t1  | @t2  | @t3  | @t4 := @t1+@t2+@t3 |
+------+------+------+--------------------+
|    1 |    2 |    4 |                  7 | 
+------+------+------+--------------------+

User variables can be assigned a value from a limited set of data types: integer, decimal, floating-point, binary or nonbinary string, or NULL value. Assignment of decimal and real values does not preserve the precision or scale of the value. A value of a type other than one of the permissible types is converted to a permissible type. For example, a value having a temporal or spatial data type is converted to a binary string.

Beginning with MySQL 4.1.1, if a user variable is assigned a nonbinary (character) string value, it has the same character set and collation as the string. The coercibility of user variables is “implicit” as of MySQL 4.1.11 and 5.0.3. (This is the same coercibility as table column values.)

If the value of a user variable is selected in a result set, it is returned to the client as a string.

If you refer to a variable that has not been initialized, it has a value of NULL and a type of string.

User variables may be used in most contexts where expressions are permitted. This does not currently include contexts that explicitly require a literal value, such as in the LIMIT clause of a SELECT statement, or the IGNORE N LINES clause of a LOAD DATA statement.

As a general rule, you should never assign a value to a user variable and read the value within the same statement. You might get the results you expect, but this is not guaranteed. The order of evaluation for expressions involving user variables is undefined and may change based on the elements contained within a given statement. In SELECT @a, @a:=@a+1, ..., you might think that MySQL will evaluate @a first and then do an assignment second. However, changing the statement (for example, by adding a GROUP BY, HAVING, or ORDER BY clause) may cause MySQL to select an execution plan with a different order of evaluation.

Another issue with assigning a value to a variable and reading the value within the same statement is that the default result type of a variable is based on its type at the start of the statement. The following example illustrates this:

mysql> SET @a='test';
mysql> SELECT @a,(@a:=20) FROM tbl_name;

For this SELECT statement, MySQL reports to the client that column one is a string and converts all accesses of @a to strings, even though @a is set to a number for the second row. After the SELECT statement executes, @a is regarded as a number for the next statement.

To avoid problems with this behavior, either do not assign a value to and read the value of the same variable within a single statement, or else set the variable to 0, 0.0, or '' to define its type before you use it.

In a SELECT statement, each select expression is evaluated only when sent to the client. This means that in a HAVING, GROUP BY, or ORDER BY clause, referring to a variable that is assigned a value in the select expression list does not work as expected:

mysql> SELECT (@aa:=id) AS a, (@aa+3) AS b FROM tbl_name HAVING b=5;

The reference to b in the HAVING clause refers to an alias for an expression in the select list that uses @aa. This does not work as expected: @aa contains the value of id from the previous selected row, not from the current row.

User variables are intended to provide data values. They cannot be used directly in an SQL statement as an identifier or as part of an identifier, such as in contexts where a table or database name is expected, or as a reserved word such as SELECT. This is true even if the variable is quoted, as shown in the following example:

mysql> SELECT c1 FROM t;
+----+
| c1 |
+----+
|  0 |
+----+
|  1 |
+----+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SET @col = "c1";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT @col FROM t;
+------+
| @col |
+------+
| c1   |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT `@col` FROM t;
ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column '@col' in 'field list'

mysql> SET @col = "`c1`";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT @col FROM t;
+------+
| @col |
+------+
| `c1` |
+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

An exception to this principle that user variables cannot be used to provide identifiers is that if you are constructing a string for use as a prepared statement to be executed later. In this case, user variables can be used to provide any part of the statement. The following example illustrates how this can be done:

mysql> SET @c = "c1";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SET @s = CONCAT("SELECT ", @c, " FROM t");
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> PREPARE stmt FROM @s;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.04 sec)
Statement prepared

mysql> EXECUTE stmt;
+----+
| c1 |
+----+
|  0 |
+----+
|  1 |
+----+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

See Section 12.6, “SQL Syntax for Prepared Statements”, for more information.

PREPARE is available as of MySQL 4.1. Before MySQL 4.1, you must assemble a string for the query in application code, as shown here using PHP 5:

<?php
  $mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "user", "pass", "test");

  if( mysqli_connect_errno() )
    die("Connection failed: %s\n", mysqli_connect_error());

  $col = "c1";

  $query = "SELECT $col FROM t";

  $result = $mysqli->query($query);

  while($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
  {
    echo "<p>" . $row["$col"] . "</p>\n";
  }

  $result->close();

  $mysqli->close();
?>

Assembling an SQL statement in this fashion is sometimes known as “Dynamic SQL”.