To move data, Hive uses the LOAD statement. Move here means the original data is moved to the target table/partition and does not exist in the original place anymore. The LOCAL keyword in the LOAD statement specifies where the files are located on the client host. If the LOCAL keyword is not specified, the files are loaded from the full Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) specified after INPATH (most of the time, hdfs path) or the value from the fs.default.name property defined in hdfs-site.xml by default. The path after INPATH can be a relative path or an absolute path. The path either points to a file or a folder (referring to all files in the folder) to be loaded, but the subfolder is not allowed in the path specified. If the data is loaded into a partition table, the partition column must be specified. The OVERWRITE keyword is used to decide whether to replace the existing data in the target table/partition or not. The following is an example of how to move data to the table or partition from local or HDFS files: 

1. Load local data in a table, internal or external. The load statement is not repeatable since the files to be loaded are moved:

      > LOAD DATA LOCAL INPATH
      > '/home/dayongd/Downloads/employee_hr.txt'
      > OVERWRITE INTO TABLE employee_hr;
      No rows affected (0.436 seconds)

2. Load the local data to a partition:

      > LOAD DATA LOCAL INPATH
      > '/home/dayongd/Downloads/employee.txt'
      > OVERWRITE INTO TABLE employee_partitioned
      > PARTITION (year=2018, month=12);
      No rows affected (0.772 seconds)

3. Load data from HDFS to a table using the URI:

      -- Use default fs path
      > LOAD DATA INPATH
      > '/tmp/hivedemo/data/employee.txt'
      > INTO TABLE employee; -- Without OVERWRITE, it appends data
      No rows affected (0.453 seconds)
      

      -- Use full URI
      > LOAD DATA INPATH
      > 'hdfs://localhost:9000/tmp/hivedemo/data/employee.txt'
      > OVERWRITE INTO TABLE employee;
      No rows affected (0.297 seconds)