On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 1:47 AM, Guillaume Lelarge <guilla...@lelarge.info>wrote:
> On Sun, 2013-01-13 at 11:08 -0800, Jeff Janes wrote: > > I have a tab-delimited text file I want to import into a table. > > However, I do not want \t translated to tab characters, etc., which is > > what the "text" format does. My file does not contain any special > > characters in need of escaping, and \ always just represents itself. > > > > So instead I want to use the "csv" format and specify the tab as the > > delimiter (on the "misc. options" tab). But, tab does not appear in > > the drop down list, and since typing tab changes the focus, a literal > > tab cannot by typed into this field. I could get around this by > > typing a tab into WordPad, then copying and pasting it into the > > delimiter field. But it would much nicer if the tab character was > > present in the delimiter drop down list (visibly represented by, say, > > "<tab>"). > > > > I wonder how this could work through a COPY command. Did you try? > because the import tool is a simple wrapper around the COPY command. > Yes, I can do this with a COPY command. For example, I can use from psql: copy foo from '/tmp/foo.txt' with (format csv, delimiter E'\t') I can also use a literal tab character within single quotes rather than the E'\t'. Because psql wants to do tab completion when you hit tab, you have to first hit ctrl-V, then tab, in order to get a literal tab. (A trick that works in readline-based programs, but of course not GUIs) Cheers, Jeff
