The docs say that it must be a literal: > The file name must be given as a literal string. (From https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/load-data.html https:

The docs say that it must be a literal: > The file name must be given as a literal string. (From https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/load-data.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/load-data.html ) However, you raise an interesting point about parsing. It is reasonable to want the server to do the parsing. You could, for example, tweak the grammar to add a new feature and do it entirely in an server update without needing to deploy a new client binary to every user. But then that makes it a bit harder to fix bugs like this. There are surely some commands parsed and implemented by the client, though. Like connect, quit, and source for example. So another way to have designed this would be to make a local command to designate a file that the server will be allowed to access. You could define the path name on the client side and pass a symbolic reference to the server. Then the client could parse that command without taking on the burden of parsing SQL, and the client could still own opening files rather than taking orders from the server.