\copy: unexpected response (4)

I have set up a batch job that pipes a couple hundred of \copy commands to
psql. It starts out well enough, sprinkled with a few error messages that I
intend to circle back and clean up after batching all of the ALTER commands
that I need, but then:

\copy gm1 from export/month1-88/13m/GM1.dat csv
psql:copy.sql:6328161: ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "743.5"
CONTEXT: COPY gm1, line 415306, column gm1c: "743.5"
\copy gm2a from export/month1-88/13m/GM2A.dat csv
\copy gm2e from export/month1-88/13m/GM2E.dat csv
\copy gm3 from export/month1-88/13m/GM3.dat csv
\copy gm4 from export/month1-88/13m/GM4.dat csv
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
psql:copy.sql:8059525: \copy: unexpected response (4)
. . .

(I am echoing everything and interleaving stderr into a log file.)

That last message is repeated literally ad inifinitum -- I mean I found 300G
of them after leaving my job running overnight!

I tried a \copy on that last file by hand and simply got another 'invalid
input syntax' message.

Can anyone speculate on what might lead to this condition? At first I
thought it was a networking problem but doing what I could to minimize that
possibility had no effect. Maybe I need to use separate connections?

The only reference I could find to that error message was
http://doxygen.postgresql.org/bin_2psql_2copy_8h.html but I know absolutely
nil about the source code.

Thanks.

Neil

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