I'm often asked how to load data in a text file into a table.   It can be done with load data infile, which has flexibility to handle different field and line delimiters, and can even handle fields that might or might not be encased in quotes.    Here's an example that includes a load data infile using a number of the options.

Quote:

# Example of creating a database and table within it, and then loading # the table from a "comma separated variable" file. # Some sample lines from our data file: # Douglas Fir,"N America, UK","light, reddish brown",530,3,y,"plywood, construction,joinery,vats" # "Hemlock, Western",N America,pale brown,500,4,n,"construction, joinery" drop database if exists sawmill; create database sawmill; use sawmill; create table timbers (        type    text,        origin  text,        colour  text,        density int,        hard    tinyint,        sched   enum ("y","n"),        useage  text,        tid     int primary key auto_increment not null); load data infile "/Library/Webserver/live_html/data/wood.xyz" into table timbers        fields terminated by "," optionally enclosed by '"'        (type, origin, colour, density, hard, sched, useage);

As an addendum, that may be 'deprecated' now,
last time I wanted to do this (on a solaris machine)
I had to run the mysql program with..

mysql -uUser -p --local-infile=1

... or it wouldn't work. Something to do with security afaicr.

I noted we didn't have to do it on the course, but we were using windows..

HTH

You can say
      LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE
rather than
      LOAD DATA INFILE
and this will cause the data to be loaded from the client's disc rather than the server's disc.  The --local-infile option enables / disables the LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE capability - in other words, it controls whether or not you can load data from the client's disc.  I don't think it effects the regular LOAD DATA INFILE command which loads data from the server's discs.

---