在创建表之后，您需要填充它。LOAD DATA 和 INSERT 语句对此非常有用。After creating your table, you need to populate it. The LOAD DATA and INSERT statements are useful for this.

假设您的宠物记录可以按如下方式描述。（请注意，MySQL 期望日期格式为 'YYYY-MM-DD'；这可能与您习惯的不同。）Suppose that your pet records can be described as shown here. (Observe that MySQL expects dates in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format; this may differ from what you are used to.)

因为你是从一个空表开始的，一个简单的方法来填充它是创建一个包含每个动物一行的文本文件，然后用一条语句将文件内容加载到表中。Because you are beginning with an empty table, an easy way to populate it is to create a text file containing a row for each of your animals, then load the contents of the file into the table with a single statement.

你可以创建一个文本文件pet.txt每行包含一条记录，值用制表符分隔，列的顺序是 CREATE TABLE句。对于缺失值（例如未知性别或仍在活的动物的死亡日期），可以使用 NULL 值。要在文本文件中表示这些，可以用 \N（反斜杠，大写 N）。例如，Whistler the bird 的记录会是这样（其中值之间的空白是一个制表符字符）：You could create a text file pet.txt containing one record per line, with values separated by tabs, and given in the order in which the columns were listed in the CREATE TABLE statement. For missing values (such as unknown sexes or death dates for animals that are still living), you can use NULL values. To represent these in your text file, use \N (backslash, capital-N). For example, the record for Whistler the bird would look like this (where the whitespace between values is a single tab character):

Whistler        Gwen    bird    \N      1997-12-09      \N

要将文本文件 pet.txt到 pet 表中，请使用以下语句：To load the text file pet.txt into the pet table, use this statement:

mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/pet.txt' INTO TABLE pet;

如果你在 Windows 上使用一个以 \r\n 作为行终止符的编辑器创建了这个文件，你应该改用以下语句：If you created the file on Windows with an editor that uses \r\n as a line terminator, you should use this statement instead:

mysql> LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/pet.txt' INTO TABLE pet
       LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n';

（在运行 macOS 的苹果机器上，你可能想使用 LINES TERMINATED BY '\r'。）(On an Apple machine running macOS, you would likely want to use LINES TERMINATED BY '\r'.)

如果愿意，你可以在 LOAD DATA 语句中明确指定列值分隔符和行结束标记，但默认值是制表符和换行符。这些默认设置足以让语句正确读取文件 pet.txt。You can specify the column value separator and end of line marker explicitly in the LOAD DATA statement if you wish, but the defaults are tab and linefeed. These are sufficient for the statement to read the file pet.txt properly.

如果该语句执行失败，则很可能是因为您的 MySQL 安装默认没有启用本地文件功能。请参阅 第 8.1.6 节，“使用 LOAD DATA LOCAL 的安全注意事项”，了解如何更改此设置的信息。If the statement fails, it is likely that your MySQL installation does not have local file capability enabled by default. See Section 8.1.6, “Security Considerations for LOAD DATA LOCAL”, for information on how to change this.

当你想一次添加一条新记录时，INSERT 语句非常有用。在最简单的形式中，你需要为每一列提供值，顺序与 CREATE TABLE 语句中列出的顺序相同。假设 Diane 得到了一只新仓鼠，名叫 “Puffball.” 你可以使用如下的 INSERT 语句添加一条新记录：When you want to add new records one at a time, the INSERT statement is useful. In its simplest form, you supply values for each column, in the order in which the columns were listed in the CREATE TABLE statement. Suppose that Diane gets a new hamster named “Puffball.” You could add a new record using an INSERT statement like this:

mysql> INSERT INTO pet
       VALUES ('Puffball','Diane','hamster','f','1999-03-30',NULL);

字符串和日期值在这里以引用的字符串形式指定。此外，使用 INSERT，你可以直接插入 NULL 来表示缺失值。你不会像使用 LOAD DATA 时那样使用 \N。String and date values are specified as quoted strings here. Also, with INSERT, you can insert NULL directly to represent a missing value. You do not use \N like you do with LOAD DATA.

从这个例子中，你应该能够看出，如果使用几个 INSERT 语句来初始化加载记录，而不是使用单个 LOAD DATA 语句，需要输入的内容将会多得多。From this example, you should be able to see that there would be a lot more typing involved to load your records initially using several INSERT statements rather than a single LOAD DATA statement.