The document you want is '$ info mysql'. No perl needed unless you need to automate this kind of recovery. Unfortunately, many mysql installations don't offer complete well-installed docs.

mysql> LOAD DATA INFILE backup.csv INTO TABLE mytable; # there are opt
+ions
[download]

The above requires file permissions on the server. mysqlimport is available from the command line in that case. For its very complete usage screen, run without agruments.

After Compline,
Zaxo