export - How can I get rid of these comments in a MySQL dump?

Question

I'm trying to create a simple structure only dump of my database. Using mysqldump gives me a result like:

/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40014 SET @OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@@FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS, FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 */;
/*!40101 SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO' */;
/*!40111 SET @OLD_SQL_NOTES=@@SQL_NOTES, SQL_NOTES=0 */;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `foo`;
/*!40101 SET @saved_cs_client     = @@character_set_client */;
/*!40101 SET character_set_client = utf8 */;

No matter what I try, I just can't seem to get rid of those comments.

I'm currently using: mysqldump -p -d --add-drop-table --skip-tz-utc --skip-set-charset -h 127.0.0.1 -u foo bar --result-file=dumpfile.sql

Edit: I do however wish to retain other comments, such as -- MySQL dump 10.13 Distrib 5.1.41, for Win32 (ia32)

Answer 1

WHOA! These aren't really comments even though they look that way. They are conditional-execution tokens.

Take this line:

/*!40014 SET @OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS=@@UNIQUE_CHECKS, UNIQUE_CHECKS=0 */;

If the version of mySQL is 4.00.14 or higher, then the MySQL server will run this statement.

This magic comment syntax is documented in the Comment Syntax section of the manual.

You probably don't want to get rid of this stuff.