Change mysql user password using command line

In your code, try enclosing password inside single quote. Alternatively, as per the documentation of mysql, following should work -

SET PASSWORD FOR 'jeffrey'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('cleartext password');

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

The last line is important or else your password change won't take effect unfortunately.

EDIT:

I ran a test in my local and it worked -

mysql>  set password for 'test' = PASSWORD('$w0rdf1sh');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Mine is version 5. You can use following command to determine your version -

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%";

As of MySQL 5.7.6, use ALTER USER

Example:

ALTER USER 'username' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Because:

• SET PASSWORD ... = PASSWORD('auth_string') syntax is deprecated as of MySQL 5.7.6 and will be removed in a future MySQL release.

• SET PASSWORD ... = 'auth_string' syntax is not deprecated, but ALTER USER is now the preferred statement for assigning passwords.

Note: u should login as root user

 SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('your password');

this is the updated answer for WAMP v3.0.6

UPDATE mysql.user 
SET authentication_string=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') 
WHERE user='root';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Before MySQL 5.7.6 this works from the command line:

mysql -e "SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('$w0rdf1sh');"

I don't have a mysql install to test on but I think in your case it would be

mysql -e "UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('$w0rdf1sh') WHERE User='tate256';"