If your webhost permissions will let you use it, then the mysql LOAD DATA INFILE syntax might cut some corners for you (of course, you may already know this!). Once you've deleted the table (as above), I think you would need do no more than:

$dbs=$dbh->prepare("LOAD DATA INFILE 'foo.txt' INTO TABLE foo");
$dbs->execute;
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Although I acknowledge that this isn't really a perl solution. But there is, as we are taught, more than one way to do it.

§ George Sherston