Re: importing db as text files

On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, expect wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 08:03:04 -0700 (PDT)
> Stephan Szabo <sszabo(at)megazone(dot)bigpanda(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, expect wrote:
> > > Oh a test....
> > >
> > > Does the \. end the STDIN input?
> > >
> > > Where's the null option? Don't you mean:
> > >
> > > copy test from stdin with delimiter ',' null '';
> >
> > No, I'm saying without a null specifier.
> >
> > > In this case I would expect the row to have:
> > >
> > > a | b
> > > ----------
> > > |
> > > abc | 5
> > >
> > >
> > > Is this too much to expect?
> >
> > Without a null specifier of '', empty string is a valid value for a.
> > Why would it get the default, and how would you insert an empty string?
> > Should it treat b differently because '' isn't valid for that type, that'd
> > be inconsistent.
> >
> > With a null specifier of '', empty string is valid for both and means
> > NULL. Otherwise, how would you specify a null when you have that
> > null specifier?
>
> Don't want to specify a null.

That doesn't answer the question. If you say that the NULL specifier is
some string and then that string were to give you something other than a
NULL, that wouldn't be reasonable behavior for people who do want a NULL.