Re: [INTERFACES] copy command & null datetime

On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Ken J. Wright wrote:

> The following example will cause COPY to fail on input:
>
> xxx|yyy|zzz||aaa|bbb|
>
> where the empty field in between zzz & aaa is of type datetime (don't know
> about other types). I know a \N will fix this, but interpreting an empty
> import field as NULL would certainly beef up COPY as other database systems
> don't output the \N which is unique to PostgreSQL. Wish list item?

Yes, I discovered this little issue the other day.  What is this \N
option, though?  I have some 900000+ records out of a 2.1 million row
table that have NULL date fields.  I ended up sticking in a dummy date (of
like 1901) for those, because I knew that valid dates stopped at a
particular lower cutoff date of around 1968, then ignore the earlier date
altogether.

Brett W. McCoy
                                        http://www.lan2wan.com/~bmccoy/
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