Change the delimiter in mysql for procedures

Creating procedures in mysql has a weird quirk. When you terminate a statement within the procedure with a ; the entire create procedure statement gets executed up until the semi-colon. This causes a syntax error.

-> create procedure thing()
-> begin
-> set @x = 0;
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 3

To get past this, you need to declare a different delimiter so that mysql know when you are ready to execute the entire create procedure statement. To change the delimiter to //, run:

delimiter //

Now you can execute the create procedure statement by putting // after end:

create procedure thing()
begin
  set @x = 0;
end //