Re: importing db as text files

On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 00:50:27 -0700,
"Gregory S. Williamson" <gsw(at)globexplorer(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Two issues raised (other than my atrocious coding)
>
> a) if defaults for a column are defined and copy is given a value of <> (implicit NULL) why not use the default ? [does an explicit \n work -- didn't try, I have to confess]

Because empty strings are valid data and you can't go assuming they are
null, since you would then need a different string to represent the empty
string.

> b) more generally, if copy finds a column that allows null and the data is a null (not explicitly defined as such, just no data) isn't that value valid, e.g. a NULL value ?

It might be bad data. The copy statement provides a way to define a string that
represents the null string.

It would probably be reasonable to add a way to specify a string to be
replaced by the default value.