Re: Tabbed data in tab-separated output

How are you attempting to restore the table after using psql? Psql
insert statements? Pgdump? COPY FROM?

Mike
On Wed, 2007-01-03 at 17:59 -0800, felix(at)crowfix(dot)com wrote:
> I have a table which has a few VARCHAR columns whose first character
> is a tab. If I run pg_dump on this table, it outputs data like this:
>
> 43158 \t555-1212 3
>
> where the two embedded white spaces are actually tabs.
>
> If I use psql to execute SQL to dump parts of the table, like this:
>
> psql -qtA -f '\t' -U xyzzy xyzzy -c 'select ... >/tmp/xxx
>
> I get this:
>
> 43158 310-319-1333, x1070 3
>
> where that initial embeded white space represents two tabs. When I
> use psql to restore this data, it thinks the 2nd column is empty and
> complains that the third column is the wrong type.
>
> pg_dump apparently is smart enough to print embedded tabs as escaped
> chars, but not psql. Is there a fix for this? I thought of reverting
> to standard output, without the -t option, and analyzing the first two
> lines to tell exactly how many spaces are assigned to each column, but
> that gives me the shudders.
>