This is an old revision of the document!
By default, when you export data from postgres, it does not use a standard CSV format.
psql -U system_user -c "SELECT * FROM table_name" > exported_data.csv
To correct for the default format of the export, perform this on the exported data:
tail exported_data.csv | sed -e "s/ *|/|/g" -e "s/| */|/g" -e 's/^ *//' > input_file.csv
Then, you can import the data like this:
sudo -u system_user psql -d database -c "\copy table_name (specify columns) FROM 'input_file.csv' (DELIMITER '|', FORMAT CSV, NULL '\N')" sudo -u system_user psql -c "\copy table_name FROM STDIN (format csv, delimiter ',') " < import_data.csv