Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> 
> >What about NULL input?  Is my warning and promotion to zero-length
> >string for NOT NULL columns OK?
> >
> >  
> >
> 
> 
> I know I originally floated this idea or one very like it, but I have 
> become convinced it is not a good idea after all. The user might not 
> know or expect that the data file has nulls, in which case promoting the 
> value might not be what s/he expects at all. I think there's a world of 
> difference between the user saying "I know there might be nulls in this 
> CSV column - ignore them" and us doing it automagically and issuing a 
> warning, which might elicit the response "Doh! I wish you'd told me 
> beforehand." If we provide an option to override handling of nulls on 
> input per column, then we can safely fail on encountering an unexpected 
> null, and all the user will have to do would be to rerun the command 
> with the override. Recovering from an unexpected promotion to non-null 
> would be a lot harder.

OK, so we need a list of columns for output with quotes, and a list of
columns where NULL should be changed to zero-length strings.

How about if we use FORCE to force quotes on output, and CONVERT to
convert null to zero-length strings on input?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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