How to fetch field from MySQL query result in bash

Use -s and -N:

> id=`mysql -uroot -ppwd -s -N -e "SELECT id FROM nagios.host WHERE name="$host""`
> echo $id
0

From the manual:

–silent, -s

   Silent mode. Produce less output. This option can be given multiple
   times to produce less and less output.

   This option results in nontabular output format and escaping of
   special characters. Escaping may be disabled by using raw mode; see
   the description for the --raw option.

–skip-column-names, -N

   Do not write column names in results.

EDIT

Looks like -ss works as well and much easier to remember.