Re: can insert 'null' into timestamp type field from command

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Bing Du wrote:

> The table is like this:
>
> ========
> maxware=# \d test;
> Table "public.test"
> Column | Type | Modifiers
> --------+-----------------------------+-----------
> a | timestamp without time zone |
> b | integer |
> =========
>
> The following insert command works fine:
>
> maxware=# insert into test (a,b) values (null,'1');
>
> But importing from an input data file does not seem to work as shown below:
>
> =========
> maxware=# copy tbl_spcase from '/home/bdu/test/input.data' delimiter as '|';
> ERROR: invalid input syntax for integer: "null"
> CONTEXT: COPY tbl_spcase, line 1, column col_id_spcase: "null"
> ==========
>
> The input.data file just has one line. But no matter what I did, neither
> of the following input format worked.
>
> 1. null|1
> 2. |1
> 3. ''|1

Here's a simple way to find out. use pg_dump to dump the table:

psql
db=>create table test (dt timestamptz, id int);
db=>insert into test (dt, id) values (NULL,22);
db=>\q
pg_dump db -t test

<Extra data deleted>

-- Data for TOC entry 3 (OID 705319)
-- Name: test; Type: TABLE DATA; Schema: public; Owner: marl8412
--

COPY test (dt, id) FROM stdin;
\N 22
\.

Note that a null is imported / exported as \N