MySQL – Restoring from a Dump Syntax
Here’s how to pass the arguments to MySQL to restore from a Dump:
mysql [database name] < [backup file name]
The “[database name]” specifies the name of the database to restore, and “[backup file name]” specifies the full path and filename to the file generated by mysqldump, such as backup.sql. You should also specify your MySQL username and password as usual using -uroot -ppassword.
If I wanted to restore the database named maindatabase from the file named backup.sql, I would run:
mysql maindatabase< backup.sql