Andrew Dunstan wrote: > Tom Lane wrote: > > >Bruno Wolff III <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > >>On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 02:26:14 -0400, > >> Andrew Dunstan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> > >> > >>>a few points: > >>>. in CSV mode, NULL should default to '' - that was in what I sent in. > >>> > >>> > > > > > > > >>Postgres normally treats an empty string as an empty string. Are you sure > >>you really want it to be treated as a NULL by default in this one place? > >> > >> > > > >I think that's a spectacularly bad idea too. People who really want > >that can write "NULL ''", but it shouldn't be implied by CSV mode. > > > > > > > > Spectacularly? Hmm. > > My approach was that the default should be the most common case. Perhaps > on import it's a tossup, but on export a CSV containing lots of \N cells > is likely to be ... unexpected. > > But, honestly, it's not worth dying in a ditch over.
It is my understanding that \N is a valid column value (no backslash escape in CSV, right?), so we can't use it for NULL. The only thing I can think of is for NULL to be: ,, (no quotes) and a zero-length string to be: ,"", How do most applications handle those two cases? If they accept either, can we use that so we can read our own CSV files without losing the NULL specification? -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 359-1001 + If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]