Re: help with COPY from .csv file into database

On Wed, 2004-08-04 at 19:15, michael@floog.net wrote:
> Definitely will do this when I get home from work tonight.
> Right now I'm ssh'ing into my box at home, but don't have an X-windows
> server installed on my Win-bloze machine here at work.  It's too
> difficult to edit the .csv file from a console with vim.  I need
> x-windows so I can run OpenOffice spreadsheet to help see the file
> better.
>
> I'm wondering If I may need to reconfigure the fields using CREATE
> TABLE, and add NULL to each field.  I know that the .csv file
> definitely has blank cells scattered throughout that were never filled
> in with text or integers.  I wonder if subsequent cell data is getting
> moved because COPY won't accept empty space between comma separated
> values.  Or is this not an issue.

COPY will accept empty space, but it will treat an empty space as an
empty string, which is not the same as NULL.  If that is meant to go in
an integer or date field, it will be invalid.

Use \N to represent nulls in the input file (or use some other
combination and specify it when invoking COPY).

> Quoting Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk>:
>
> >
> > Precisely that.  Either all the data goes in or none of it does.
> >
> > Clean up your input file and it will work.
> >
>
--
Oliver Elphick                                          olly@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
GPG: 1024D/A54310EA  92C8 39E7 280E 3631 3F0E  1EC0 5664 7A2F A543 10EA
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