Re: multiline CSV fields

Kris Jurka wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 29 Nov 2004, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 
> > Longer term I'd like to be able to have a command parameter that 
> > specifies certain fields as multiline and for those relax the line end 
> > matching restriction (and for others forbid multiline altogether). That 
> > would be a TODO for 8.1 though, along with optional special handling for 
> > first line column headings.
> > 
> 
> Endlessly extending the COPY command doesn't seem like a winning 
> proposition to me and I think if we aren't comfortable telling every user 
> to write a script to pre/post-process the data we should instead provide a 
> bulk loader/unloader that transforms things to our limited COPY 
> functionality.  There are all kinds of feature requests I've seen 
> along these lines that would make COPY a million option mess if we try to 
> support all of it directly.
> 
> - skipping header rows
> - skipping certain data file columns
> - specifying date formats
> - ignoring duplicates
> - outputting an arbitrary SELECT statement

Agreed. There are lots of wishes for COPY and it will become bloated if
we do them all.

I am concerned someone will say, "Oh, I know the CSV format and I might
load the data into another database someday so I will always use CVS"
not knowing it isn't a 100% consistent format.  I think we need to
issues a warning if a \r or \n is output by COPY CSV just so people
understand the limitation.  We can then reevaluate where we need to go
for 8.1.

Open item updated:
* warn on COPY TO ... CSV with \r,\n in data

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