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| sql-statement ::= | COPY [ OR conflict-algorithm ] [database-name .] table-name FROM filename [ USING DELIMITERS delim ] |
The COPY command is available in SQLite version 2.8 and earlier. The COPY command has been removed from SQLite version 3.0 due to complications in trying to support it in a mixed UTF-8/16 environment. In version 3.0, the command-line shell contains a new command .import that can be used as a substitute for COPY.
The COPY command is an extension used to load large amounts of data into a table. It is modeled after a similar command found in PostgreSQL. In fact, the SQLite COPY command is specifically designed to be able to read the output of the PostgreSQL dump utility pg_dump so that data can be easily transferred from PostgreSQL into SQLite.
The table-name is the name of an existing table which is to be filled with data. The filename is a string or identifier that names a file from which data will be read. The filename can be the STDIN to read data from standard input.
Each line of the input file is converted into a single record in the table. Columns are separated by tabs. If a tab occurs as data within a column, then that tab is preceded by a baskslash "\" character. A baskslash in the data appears as two backslashes in a row. The optional USING DELIMITERS clause can specify a delimiter other than tab.
If a column consists of the character "\N", that column is filled with the value NULL.
The optional conflict-clause allows the specification of an alternative constraint conflict resolution algorithm to use for this one command. See the section titled ON CONFLICT for additional information.
When the input data source is STDIN, the input can be terminated by a line that contains only a baskslash and a dot: "\.".