MySQL how to specify string position with LOAD DATA INFILE - mysql

Question

I have ASCII files with a static number of characters for each line with no delimiters. I'd like to use LOAD DATA INFILE to import into my table.
Example of file:
USALALABAMA
USARARKANSAS
USFLFLORIDA
The structure for this table:
country Char(2)
state Char(2)
name Varchar(70)
CREATE TABLE `states` (
`country` char(2) COLLATE latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
`state` char(2) COLLATE latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(70) COLLATE latin1_general_ci NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1_general_ci COLLATE=latin1_general_ci;
Is it possible to specify a start and end position for each column?

Answer 1

According to the documentation, you can load a fixed format file without using a temporary table.
If the FIELDS TERMINATED BY and FIELDS ENCLOSED BY values are both empty (''), a fixed-row (nondelimited) format is used. With fixed-row format, no delimiters are used between fields (but you can still have a line terminator). Instead, column values are read and written using a field width wide enough to hold all values in the field. For TINYINT, SMALLINT, MEDIUMINT, INT, and BIGINT, the field widths are 4, 6, 8, 11, and 20, respectively, no matter what the declared display width is.
The positions are derived from the columns definitions, which in your case match the structure of the file. So you just need to do:
LOAD DATA INFILE 'your_file' INTO TABLE your_table
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ''
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n'
SET name = trim(name);

Answer 2

First create a temporary table which you will load all lines into it, then you can load the data from the temporary table into the main table and split to fields using substring
Something like this:
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE tmp_lines
(countrystring TEXT);
LOAD DATA INFILE 'yourfilegoeshere' INTO TABLE tmp_lines
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ''
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';
INSERT INTO main_table SELECT SUBSTRING(countrystring,1,2), SUBSTRING(countrystring,3, 2), SUBSTRING(countrystring,5) from tmp_lines;

Answer 3

Another way to do this is just assigning a variable and splitting it direct in your load.
LOAD DATA INFILE 'yourfilegoeshere' INTO TABLE main_table
LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' (#_var)
set
field1=TRIM(SUBSTR(#_var from 1 for 2)),
field2=TRIM(SUBSTR(#_var from 3 for 2)),
field3=TRIM(SUBSTR(#_var from 5 for 70));
Just be sure not to specify any field separator, otherwise you will have to use more variables, note that I'm using TRIM to clean data in the same statement.