in order to find out the column specifications I should use, I need to know what type of data each column has
You don't need to figure that out up-front! Load all the data into a database right now, every field is provisionally type text or blob, that means that the data passes into the database completely lossless and unmolested.

Next use database queries and other features to figure out what the data in each column looks like, it can handle large amount of data much better than you fumbling around with command-line tools.

After you have made a conservative guess for the accurate type of a column, alter the column type. If you were wrong and a row datum does not meet the constraints of the new type, then the conversion will throw an error and abort the type change. You can modify your guess and try again.

In reply to Re: Possible faster way to do this? by daxim
in thread Possible faster way to do this? by Anonymous Monk

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