Gotta' admit, I prefer working in SQL/TSQL, so even for (moderately) large text files I'll often just do an:

OPENROWSET(BULK '<path_and_file_name>', SINGLE_CLOB) --or NCLOB, if req'd

to load the whole file at once into a [n]varchar(max) variable or table column, then process it from there. Maybe that can be of some help in your case as well.

[IIRC, that method doesn't optimize logging, so you might want to use a temp table when possible, or always if the file is very large.]