Re: Ragged CSV import

Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
>> I have received a requirement for the ability to import ragged CSV
>> files, i.e. files that contain variable numbers of columns per row.

BTW, one other thought about this: I think the historical reason for
COPY being strict about the number of incoming columns was that it
provided a useful cross-check that the parsing hadn't gone off into
the weeds. We have certainly seen enough examples where the reported
manifestation of, say, an escaping mistake was that COPY saw the row
as having too many or too few columns. So being permissive about it
would lose some error detection capability. I am not clear about
whether CSV format is sufficiently more robust than the traditional
COPY format to render this an acceptable loss. Comments?

(One possible answer to this is to make the behavior optional, though
surely COPY has got too many options already :-()

regards, tom lane