importing csv files to mysql database using cronjobs

We do not allow LOAD DATA INFILE because it requires FILE read/write permission which we can not provide for security reasons. Your options are to convert them to INSERT or to use a mysql server compiled to execute as your system user.

I don't know if you're familiar with python, but this can be acomplished a lot easier with a python skript, which will also help avoiding eventual proplems with uncorrect escapes, etc. (Importing csv directly into a database can be error prown).

Have a look here: http://docs.python.org/library/csv.html

and here: http://sqlobject.org/

The first is the csv parsing and processing module of python's standard library, the second one is an easy to use object relational wrapper. If you are familiar with django you can also use django's orm for the same purpose.

Depending on the amount of columns this can be written within a couple of hours in python. IMHO, it is a lot easier to integrate python skripts into a workflow and they are a lot easier to maintain than shell skripts.

Instead of piping your skript outputs into mysql-client you pipe it into a python skript, thus you don't have to change no a single line of your bash skripts.