Bulk insert, SQL Server 2000, unix linebreaks

Question

I am trying to insert a .csv file into a database with unix linebreaks. The command I am running is:

BULK INSERT table_name
FROM \'C:\\file.csv\' 
WITH 
( 
         


        

Answer 1

It comes down to this. Unix uses LF (ctrl-J), MS-DOS/Windows uses CR/LF (ctrl-M/Ctrl-J).

When you use '\n' on Unix, it gets translated to a LF character. On MS-DOS/Windows it gets translated to CR/LF. When the your import runs on the Unix formatted file, it sees only a LF. Hence, its often easier to run the file through unix2dos first. But as you said in you original question, you don't want to do this (I'll assume there is a good reason why you can't).

Why can't you do:

(ROWTERMINATOR = CHAR(10))

Probably because when the SQL code is being parsed, it is not replacing the char(10) with the LF character (because it's already encased in single-quotes). Or perhaps its being interpreted as:

(ROWTERMINATOR =
     )

What happens when you echo out the contents of @bulk_cmd?