I think you have to use \004 and \005 as delimiters for your inner maps.
-----Original Message----- From: Sammy Yu [mailto:s...@brightedge.com] Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 11:13 AM To: hive-user@hadoop.apache.org Subject: Map<string, Map<string, string>> for TEXTFILE Hi guys, I'm trying to create a textfile for a table with a Map<string, Map<string, string>> column: CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE map_test (id int, m MAP<string, MAP<string, string>>) row format delimited fields terminated by '\001' escaped by '\004' collection items terminated by '\002' map keys terminated by '\003; location '/user/hadoop/map_test'; I can't seem to figure out how to construct the serialized textfile form for the value of the inner map. I've create a file with the following content: 100<\001>physical<\003>height<\003>60<\002>weight<\003>120.5<\003>inner<\003>outgoing<\003>5.2 to represent id=100, m={"physical":{"height":"60", "weight":"120.5"},"inner":{"outgoing:"5.2"}} however when I do a query I get: hive> select * from map_test; 100 {"physical":{"height\u000360":null},"weight":{"120.5":null},"inner":{"outgoing\u00035.2":null}} I think I'm suppose to escape the value of the outer map's key. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Sammy
