How to include a semicolon (";") in a MySQL pager command
Try to set delimiter to something else than ;

     mysql&gt; DELIMITER endl
     mysql&gt;


Then you can set pager with the semicolon:

     mysql&gt; pager pager perl -nle 'print "    $_";'endl
     PAGER set to 'pager perl -nle 'print "    $_";''


Then you can come back to ;

     mysql&gt; DELIMITER ;