I wrote:
> Darcy Buskermolen wrote:
>
>> + CSV mode will include all characters between
>> <literal>QUOTE</> and
>
>> + <literal>DELIMITER</> in the value for the field, this is of
>> special
>> + attention to those who use CSV mode to import data from other
>> RDBMS
>> + systems that create fixed width CSV files.
>>
>
>
> First, this need some grammar cleanup. But more importantly, it's not
> quite a correct formulation. CSV mode splits a line on (unquoted)
> delimiters. Within each chunk dequoting is done, and withing quoted
> sections de-escaping is done. But nothing is discarded.
>
> i.e. with the quote char as '"', 'foo"bar"baz' becomes 'foobarbaz' and
> ' "x" ' becomes ' x '.
>
> I understand Dary's problem has been that Oracle pads CSV lines with
> spaces. Perhaps we need to warn specifically about that - I suspect
> most people for whom it might be important will miss the significance
> otherwise.
>
> I'll work on some better wording.
>
>
How about this?
In CSV mode all characters are significant. A quoted value surrounded by
white space, or any characters other than <literal>DELIMITER</>, will
include those characters. This can cause errors if you import data from
a system that pads CSV lines with white space out to some fixed width.
If such a situation arises you might need to preprocess the CSV file to
remove the trailing white space, before importing the data into Postgres.
cheers
andrew
