[dashezup]

True, I don't see the benefits of writing it in bash/shell script in this case. Plus you can get proper syntax highlighting for SQL in your text editor for ".sql" file.

  sqlite3 database.db <query.sql

Some other DBMS have similar things, for MariadDB you could write it in a ".sql" file as well, setting variables and use it so that you can write a generic sql file. (seems you can't use the variable thing with sqlite3)

  MariaDB> SET @username='UserName@localhost';
  MariaDB> SET @hostname='localhost';
  MariaDB> SOURCE create-user.sql;

Such things is usually cleaner/simpler than writing in bash.

[nerdponx]

For what it's worth, you can have "nested" syntax highlighting of SQL inside Bash scripts, with Tree Sitter in Neovim.

You could also read the contents of the query file into a shell parameter with the `read` builtin.