Hi jjhorner.

Good question. If you are running mySQL, you can use two primary tools. From the mySQL prompt enter:

mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE "filename.txt" INTO TABLE tablename
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Since mySQL isn't case sensitive, you need not use the same uppercase style as I did. The filename must be the same as the name of the table. Example:

mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE "monks.txt" INTO TABLE monks
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There must be no 'extra' characters before the .filetype. If so, mySQL will try to insert the data into the wrong table. The other tool is called 'mysqlimport' and it acts as a command line interface to LOAD DATA.

It works like this:

(system prompt) mysqlimport --local database_name datafile.txt
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Hope this helps,
-Katie