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I am very confused about LOAD DATA INFILE

after searching SO and google I have found no help on what I am attempting to do. I want to create a new table, and load the contents of a csv file. The csv files first row is the column names I want.

Or if that cannot be done, how can I load the file without knowing how many columns exist?

LOAD DATA INFILE 'file.txt'
  INTO TABLE t1
  (... unknown number of columns ...);
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LOAD DATA INFILE 'file.csv' INTO TABLE t1? – Shef Aug 8 '11 at 16:07
That will only work assuming the table has the correct number of columns to begin with. – rlemon Aug 8 '11 at 16:08

1 Answer

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You're going to need a tool other than mysql to load csvs without a predetermined schema.

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thats what I feared.. can you suggest any (hopefully free) good ones? – rlemon Aug 8 '11 at 18:22
I don't know of any off hand, it would be pretty simple to code one up though. Do you know any scripting languages? – PMV Aug 8 '11 at 18:42
Ok well I just solved my own problem . I am working with a rather large export from another program. The export only allows CSV exports, however it is outputting a invalid file. (problems escaping characters) - I did find the main mdf file .. so now i'm working on hacking into that. :) – rlemon Aug 8 '11 at 19:36

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