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.
Advertising
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 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
