Re: COPY command - Mailing list pgsql-novice

Keith,

I downloaded gvim and viewed the file.  It shows the filler field in position 61 as "^@", two characters, position 62
startsthe next field. 

I've tried the following:

COPY tblparcelto_tmp FROM '/pacelto.txt' WITH NULL AS '\^@'
COPY tblparcelto_tmp FROM '/pacelto.txt' WITH NULL AS '\^\@'
COPY tblparcelto_tmp FROM '/pacelto.txt' WITH NULL AS '^@'

...and many, many other combinations to try to get it to work.  No matter what I try each record is truncated at
position60.   

Shouldn't this work?  I'm considering abandoning the WITH NULL attribute and use a line editor to take care of the
problem. It just seems like this should work and there's something about the character set or NULL value that I don't
understand.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Mike Nees


----------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:23:00 -0400
> From: KeithW@NarrowPathInc.com
> To: jmnees@hotmail.com
> CC: pgsql-novice@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [NOVICE] COPY command
>
> >>>Mike Nees wrote:
> >>>
> >>>I have several large fixed record length files that I'm trying to load into a new db.  My plan is to use a
temporarytable with one CHAR column to load the file, then use a second staging table to parse the fields and set
appropriatedata types.  When I use the COPY command to load the temporary table I only get part of the record.  When I
encountera FILLER column, which appears to be a NULL value, the rest of the record starting with the Filler doesn't
load. Total record size is 455, at position 61 is the first filler field, defined as PIC X(1) from the legacy system.
I'mable to load all the records in the file into the temporary table,  but only for positions 1 through 60.  When I
lookedat the flat file in TextPad,  TextPad lists a special character at position 61 with a value as "NUL (^@ = 0 =
0x0)".
> >>>
> >>>My questions:
> >>>
> >>>Are these just null characters?
> >>>Not knowing PERL; Is there any easy solution to removing these characters programmatically prior to using the COPY
command?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>I can manually remove the NULL characters, but I'm looking for a better solution.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Any help would be appreciated.
> >>>
> >>>Thanks,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Mike
> >>
> >>Mike,
> >>
> >>The COPY command does allow you to define the NULL character using the
> >>WITH NULL AS attribute.
> >>
> >>COPY mytable
> >>FROM 'myfile'
> >>WITH NULL AS 'null string';
> >>
> >>See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/sql-copy.html
> >>
> >>HTH
> >>--
> >>
> >>Kind Regards,
> >>Keith
> >
> > Mike Nees wrote:
> > How do I figure out what the "NULL" string would be?  The value from TextPad?  BTW, I'm running Postgres on XP.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > J. Michael Nees
> > jmnees@hotmail.com
>
> Mike,
>
> The value shown in TextPad might work.  If it were me on a Windows box I
> would be using gvim to try and determine the same thing.
>
> --
>
> Kind Regards,
> Keith
>
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