Stupid SQl question on inserting items

This is a dumb basic level SQL question.

is there any other way to insert records without having to fill in all
of the values as in

INSERT into table_name WITH VALUES (blah, blah, blah...)

or the COPY method?

It is becoming a chore to sync up a table with a lot of fields.   I am
porting several DB into postgres and using a variety of techniques to do
it (some of these are poorly formatted text files).  Most of the fields
are blank, so when I goof up, I spend 15 minutes comparing files to find
the problem.  The elusive "parse error near '" does not help much :)

I thought I knew how to do this with Postgres but can't seem to find it
in my notes.

I thought something along the lines of insert a blank (except for id)
record than updating it with name pairs might work.


-- 
Zot O'Connor

www.ZotConsulting.com
www.WhiteKnightHackers.com