Hello, I apologize if the question has already been asked before, but I need some clarification on the use of .mode and .separator relatively to the .import command.
Say I have a structured tab-separated text file "mydata.txt" I want to import into a database using the .import FILE TABLE command. If I refer to the documentation obtained by typing ".help" in the SQLite shell, it states : .separator COL ?ROW? Change the column separator and optionally the row separator for both the output mode and .import But this is in apparent contradiction with the Command Line Shell help : "Note that it is important to set the "mode" to "csv" before running the ".import" command. This is necessary to prevent the command-line shell from trying to interpret the input file text as some other format. " https://sqlite.org/cli.html So, if I use .separator, as hinted by the built-in .help command, I get the following sqlite> .separator tabs sqlite> .import mydata.txt mytable I get the following error : Error: multi-character column separators not allowed for import So I fall back on my feet by using .mode instead of .separator: sqlite> .mode tabs sqlite> .import mydata.txt mytable But I'd like to understand why .separator does not behave the way I expect it to? Is it because there is confusion between the default ".mode" (which is comma-separated) onto which I impose a tab through ".separator"? Thanks for your explanations, and for this great piece of software. Luc _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@mailinglists.sqlite.org http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
