I frequently need to generate a quick report generated from a quick database query. I have been doing this by creating a simple PHP script that queries the database and then displays the results as a CSV. However, I just found a way to do it directly from the MySQL command line, which makes it possible to skip the steps of creating the PHP script.
Simply run the command like this:
mysql>SELECT * FROM sometable INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/output.csv' FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',';
That will save the results to the file specified in a simple CSV format. There are also options for enclosing fields in quotes, the line terminators, and several other options.