On Aug 4, 2009, at 5:44 PM, Craig White wrote:

> I need to update almost all (but not quite all) records in a data  
> table
> because the dates were imported like '08/04/09' instead of  
> '2009-08-04'
>
> I am looking at the mysql reference manual but it doesn't appear  
> that it
> would be easy to script a line by line 'update' from a csv file.
>
> Now I still have the csv files (and a copy with the dates fixed) and I
> suppose I could 'find', 'delete' and then 'import' again but there are
> relational records so mysql would probably prevent me from doing that
> unless I suspend all relational checks when I delete those records  
> prior
> to reimporting them with the fixed dates.
>
> What's the best way to accomplish this?
>
> Craig

I'm not sure if this helps, but MySQL has a 'csv' storage engine.   
This allows you to load a CSV file as a table like any other in the  
database.  Once loaded, you can move the data to another table with  
something like 'INSERT INTO real_table SELECT * FROM csv_table'.  Or,  
perhaps in your case a multi-table update from the CSV file to your  
target table might do the trick.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/csv-storage-engine.html

alex