Hi,
Consider the following input data: 1234,24.50,10-Jan-2003,10/1/03,10-01-2003,hiall
The interpretation for the numbers is: 1234 = 12.34, 24.50 = 24.50 The interpretation for the dates is: January 10th,
2003,October 1st, 2003, October 1st, 2003
I don't believe it's possible, currently, to correctly import this data with copy. I'm not sure the date fields would
evenbe accepted as date fields. It'd be nice if this could be made to work. From a user standpoint consider:
copy blah ( to_number(cost,'99V99'), -- I think that's right? to_number(cost2,'99.99'),
to_date(install_date,'DD-Mon-YYYY'), to_date(invoice_date,'MM/DD/YY'), to_date(bill_date,'MM-DD-YYYY'),
service_type)from stdin;
Perhaps the actual syntax would be different, but the idea is there, be able to specify a function with arguments
tohandle the conversion from the text to the resulting data type in the table. Right now casting is done but that
castinghas to be expected to work for all input formats for each data type cast and that just isn't reasonable to
tryand force something to do. Instead, I believe, the number of input formats accepted has been limited.
Now, that isn't an actual data set I have to deal with, but it's a good illustration of the problem I've had with some
ofmy data sets, mainly with the date fields though there is one data set that has the problem of having an implied
decimalpoint.
Thanks, Stephen
