Syntax:
LOAD DATA [LOW_PRIORITY | CONCURRENT] [LOCAL] INFILE 'file_name'
    [REPLACE | IGNORE]
    INTO TABLE tbl_name
    [CHARACTER SET charset_name]
    [{FIELDS | COLUMNS}
        [TERMINATED BY 'string']
        [[OPTIONALLY] ENCLOSED BY 'char']
        [ESCAPED BY 'char']
    ]
    [LINES
        [STARTING BY 'string']
        [TERMINATED BY 'string']
    ]
    [IGNORE number LINES]
    [(col_name_or_user_var,...)]
    [SET col_name = expr,...]

The LOAD DATA INFILE statement reads rows from a text file into a table
at a very high speed. The file name must be given as a literal string.

LOAD DATA INFILE is the complement of SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. (See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/select.html.) To write data from
a table to a file, use SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. To read the file back
into a table, use LOAD DATA INFILE. The syntax of the FIELDS and LINES
clauses is the same for both statements. Both clauses are optional, but
FIELDS must precede LINES if both are specified.

For more information about the efficiency of INSERT versus LOAD DATA
INFILE and speeding up LOAD DATA INFILE, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/insert-speed.html.

The character set indicated by the character_set_database system
variable is used to interpret the information in the file. SET NAMES
and the setting of character_set_client do not affect interpretation of
input. If the contents of the input file use a character set that
differs from the default, it is usually preferable to specify the
character set of the file by using the CHARACTER SET clause, which is
available as of MySQL 5.1.17.

LOAD DATA INFILE interprets all fields in the file as having the same
character set, regardless of the data types of the columns into which
field values are loaded. For proper interpretation of file contents,
you must ensure that it was written with the correct character set. For
example, if you write a data file with mysqldump -T or by issuing a
SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE statement in mysql, be sure to use a
--default-character-set option with mysqldump or mysql so that output
is written in the character set to be used when the file is loaded with
LOAD DATA INFILE.

Note that it is currently not possible to load data files that use the
ucs2 character set.

As of MySQL 5.1.6, the character_set_filesystem system variable
controls the interpretation of the file name.

You can also load data files by using the mysqlimport utility; it
operates by sending a LOAD DATA INFILE statement to the server. The
--local option causes mysqlimport to read data files from the client
host. You can specify the --compress option to get better performance
over slow networks if the client and server support the compressed
protocol. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqlimport.html.

If you use LOW_PRIORITY, execution of the LOAD DATA statement is
delayed until no other clients are reading from the table. This affects
only storage engines that use only table-level locking (MyISAM, MEMORY,
MERGE).

If you specify CONCURRENT with a MyISAM table that satisfies the
condition for concurrent inserts (that is, it contains no free blocks
in the middle), other threads can retrieve data from the table while
LOAD DATA is executing. Using this option affects the performance of
LOAD DATA a bit, even if no other thread is using the table at the same
time.

CONCURRENT is not replicated when using statement-based replication;
however, it is replicated when using row-based replication. See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/replication-features-load-data.h
tml, for more information.

*Note*: Prior to MySQL 5.1.23, LOAD DATA performed very poorly when
importing into partitioned tables. The statement now uses buffering to
improve performance; however, the buffer uses 130 KB memory per
partition to achieve this. (Bug#26527 (http://bugs.mysql.com/26527))

The LOCAL keyword, if specified, is interpreted with respect to the
client end of the connection:

o If LOCAL is specified, the file is read by the client program on the
  client host and sent to the server. The file can be given as a full
  path name to specify its exact location. If given as a relative path
  name, the name is interpreted relative to the directory in which the
  client program was started.

o If LOCAL is not specified, the file must be located on the server
  host and is read directly by the server. The server uses the
  following rules to locate the file:

  o If the file name is an absolute path name, the server uses it as
    given.

  o If the file name is a relative path name with one or more leading
    components, the server searches for the file relative to the
    server's data directory.

  o If a file name with no leading components is given, the server
    looks for the file in the database directory of the default
    database.

Note that, in the non-LOCAL case, these rules mean that a file named as
./myfile.txt is read from the server's data directory, whereas the file
named as myfile.txt is read from the database directory of the default
database. For example, if db1 is the default database, the following
LOAD DATA statement reads the file data.txt from the database directory
for db1, even though the statement explicitly loads the file into a
table in the db2 database:

LOAD DATA INFILE 'data.txt' INTO TABLE db2.my_table;

Windows path names are specified using forward slashes rather than
backslashes. If you do use backslashes, you must double them.

For security reasons, when reading text files located on the server,
the files must either reside in the database directory or be readable
by all. Also, to use LOAD DATA INFILE on server files, you must have
the FILE privilege. See
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/privileges-provided.html. For
non-LOCAL load operations, if the secure_file_priv system variable is
set to a non-empty directory name, the file to be loaded must be
located in that directory.

URL: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/load-data.html

