On 22/04/14 21:09, Nicklas Avén wrote:
Hallo I am struggling to find the best solution to ignore blank lines in csv-file when using file_fdw. A blank line makes the table unreadable. I would like to avoid manipulating the file directly and avoid the need to make a new corrected copy of the file. I am on Linux so I have found a solution when using COPY: COPY test_table from program 'sed ''/^ *$/d'' /opt/builds/inotify_test/test.csv' with (format 'csv', header 'true'); but since the "program" option not seems to be implemented in file_fdw I am still searching for a solution.
file_fdw uses the same mechanism internally as "COPY <table> FROM '/file.csv'"; I don't think there's currently a way for this mechanism to ignore blank lines. Unfortunately CSV is not exactly a well-defined standard, so it's debatable whether it's worth modifying the mechanism to cope with this situation. The closest thing to a standard, RFC 4180 ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180 ) doesn't seem to have anything to say about them; on the other hand LibreOffice Calc will happily import files with blank lines.
I have also found in an email from 2011 http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/4E699DE6.8010606@xxxxxxxxx that when force_not_null was implemented in file_fdw the patch also included "some cosmetic changes such as removing useless blank lines." But I do not find that blank lines is removed in general since I cannot read csv-files with blank lines, and I do not understand how the option "force_not_null" can do the trick since that is on the column level and not lines/row.
The "blank lines" referred to here are in the source code itself. Regards Ian Barwick -- Ian Barwick http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
