Dumping and importing with backslash

Background

I have a MySQL database, from which I run mysqldump for backups.

In this database, I have some fields that will contain some backslashes, and when dumping this, it will contain something like

INSERT INTO table1 (col1, col2) VALUES (1, 'frac{1}{2}');

(For reference, this is TeX, used in this case for typesetting mathematics.)

Problem

Now, when I import this backup with

mysql -u username -p database_name < file.sql

the backslash in the col2 value disappears. Likely, instead of inserting it, it’s being used to escape the following character.

Question

Is there a way to insert this while maintaining the backslash?

My idea so far is to make a script that plows through the file and replaces every occurrence of with \. Is this reliable?

I would assume that someone already thought of this problem and maybe created some way of dealing with it.

Any help appreciated!

If you use mysqldump to export your data it will take care of this for you. For example:

mysql> select * from table1;
+------+-------------+
| id   | mystr       |
+------+-------------+
|    1 | frac{1}{2} |
+------+-------------+

mysqldump -uroot -p database1 table1 > table1.sql

cat table1.sql | grep VALUES
INSERT INTO `table1` VALUES (1,'\frac{1}{2}');

notice the escaped backslash? and:

mysql -uroot -p database1 < table1.sql

mysql -uroot -p database1 -e "select * from table1"
Enter password: 
+------+-------------+
| id   | mystr       |
+------+-------------+
|    1 | frac{1}{2} |
+------+-------------+

In what context did you run the INSERT? Most client languages have a way of “escaping what needs to be escaped for MySQL”. Such a function would take care of doubling up the backslash and dealing with quotes.