Re: importing db as text files

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 02:59:29PM -0700, Gregory S. Williamson wrote:
> I tend to use perl to preprocess dumps (in our case from Informix). It tends to work much faster than shell scripts
(althoughyour mileage may vary). I have to fix missing numeric values (if the column allows nulls why can't the copy
commandaccept an empty field, I wonder?), missing dates. In other cases is massages date formats, spatial data, etc.
Forexample, a crude program below to clean DOQQ metadata: 

[snip]

>                 $t_production_date = "\\N";    # psql seems to dump a blank data with this nomenclature

Umm, \N represents NULL. NULL is not a blank field, it's null. You could
also tell copy that a blank field represents a null but that might have
unexpected effects on text fields which are supposed to be blank.

--
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog@svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> "All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good
> men to do nothing." - Edmond Burke
> "The penalty good people pay for not being interested in politics is to be
> governed by people worse than themselves." - Plato