Re: Good Delimiter for copy command

David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> writes:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 05:17:40PM +0100, Marco Colombo wrote:
>> Is it possibile to use some unicode character which is unlikely to
>> appear in the data set as delimiter? Something like U+FFFC.

> No. The delimiter needs to be one byte long at the moment. The error
> message you're getting probably needs an update. Bug?

>> $ psql -c "\copy test from '2.txt' delimiter "
>> ERROR: COPY delimiter must be a single character
>> \copy: ERROR: COPY delimiter must be a single character

In 8.3 and CVS HEAD these messages are phrased as "must be a single
ASCII character" which I suppose is someone's attempt at improving the
situation; but IMHO this has replaced an imprecision with a lie. It
works fine with non-ASCII characters, if you're working in a single-byte
encoding (eg LATIN-n).

I think it should say "must be a single one-byte character" and not try
to talk down to the reader.

regards, tom lane