[Blind-sysadmins] piping password hashes in to a mysql command

Hello, I'm doing a database upgrade. I am increasing some columns and adding a password hash. What I'm wanting to do is increase one column from a varchar(128) to a varchar(150) I've tried: alter table table_name set column_name varchar(150) didn't work, can anyone spot my sql error? I'm using SecureCRT to access the server. What I'm wanting to do is take the output of this command: dovecot pw -s SHA512-CRYPT which gives me a nice lovely password and use that in an sql create or update statement. My question how do you get that command output in to the create or update commands? On windows I would select the information copy to clipboard and paste. I do not believe I have that choice here. Thanks. Dave.