Retrieving Information from a Table statement. Suppose that Diane gets a new hamster named “Puffball.”  You could add a new record using an  INSERT  statement like this: 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 . 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. mysql>  INSERT INTO pet VALUES (’Puffball’,’Diane’,’hamster’,’f’,’1999-03-30’,NULL); SELECT  what_to_select FROM  which_table WHERE  conditions_to_satisfy ; 3.3.4 Retrieving Information from a Table The  SELECT  statement is used to pull information from a table. The general form of the statement is: what_to_select  indicates what you want to see. This can be a list of columns, or  *  to indicate “all columns.” which_table  indicates the table from which you want to retrieve data. The  WHERE  clause is optional. If it is present,  conditions_to_satisfy  specifies one or more conditions that rows must satisfy to qualify for retrieval. The simplest form of  SELECT  retrieves everything from a table: This form of  SELECT  uses  * , which is shorthand for “select all columns.”  This is useful if you want to review your entire table, for example, after you’ve just loaded it with your initial data set. For example, you may happen to think that the birth date for Bowser doesn’t seem quite right. Consulting your original pedigree papers, you find that the correct birth year should be 1989, not 1979. There are at least two ways to fix this: However, if you do this, you must also re-enter the record for Puffball. 3.3.4.1 Selecting All Data +----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+ | name | owner | species | sex | birth | death | +----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+ | Fluffy | Harold | cat | f | 1993-02-04 | NULL | | Claws | Gwen | cat | m | 1994-03-17 | NULL | | Buffy | Harold | dog | f | 1989-05-13 | NULL | | Fang | Benny | dog | m | 1990-08-27 | NULL | | Bowser | Diane | dog | m | 1979-08-31 | 1995-07-29 | | Chirpy | Gwen | bird | f | 1998-09-11 | NULL | | Whistler | Gwen | bird | NULL | 1997-12-09 | NULL | | Slim | Benny | snake | m | 1996-04-29 | NULL | | Puffball | Diane | hamster | f | 1999-03-30 | NULL | +----------+--------+---------+------+------------+------------+ mysql>  SELECT * FROM pet; mysql>  DELETE FROM pet; mysql>  LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE ’pet.txt’ INTO TABLE pet; mysql>  UPDATE pet SET birth = ’1989-08-31’ WHERE name = ’Bowser’; •Edit the file  pet.txt  to correct the error, then empty the table and reload it using  DELETE  and  LOAD DATA : •Fix only the erroneous record with an  UPDATE  statement: 312