Re: [GENERAL] copy from file with null date fields - Mailing list pgsql-general

How are you representing NULL in the source file.   Blank or zero length
strings are not NULL.   They are treated as illegal dates.   I believe
"\N" is used to represent NULL in the copy in/out.

William D. McCoy wrote:

> I'm running Postgres 6.3.2 on a Sparc20 running Solaris 2.5.1 and I'm
> having difficulty copying data from certain text files where fields
> expected to be type 'date' are null.  When the copy encounters the
> null field it stops and prints the message:
>
> ERROR:  Bad date external representation
>
> I have purposely _not_ defined the field as 'not null'.  I have not
> had trouble reading from files where other types of fields are null.
>
> Any ideas, or is this a known bug?
>
> --
> William D. McCoy
> Geosciences
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst, MA  01003