Fastest import?

Greetings,

What is the fastest way to import data from an ASCII file? I have ~17,000
records in a .DBF file that I need to get into my pg6.4.2 database. I have
written a program that reads the .DBF file, massages the data and writes it
out to a text file, one record per line.

I initially had my program issue the insert commands instead of writing
them to a text file, but the import took about 2 hours! We are only
talking about 4Meg worth of data here, it should not take that long should
it? I was hoping that once in a text file that psql < text.file would be
faster, but it is not. Is there any way to speed this up?

I was also looking at the copy command and maybe using the binary mode, but
writing out binary data is not my idea of a good time and I'm on a deadline
here. Is there a program out there that might take a text file of insert
statements and convert them to a binary format that copy can use?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Matthew Hagerty