Here is my simplified scenario:
I have a table in SQL Server 2005 with single column of type varchar(500). Data in the column is always 350 characters in length.
When I run a select on it in SSMS query editor, copy & paste the result set in to a text file, the line length in the file is 350, which matches the actual data length.
But when I use sqlcmd with the -o parameter, the resulting file has line length 500, which matches the max length of varchar(500).
So question is, without using any string functions in select, is there a way to let sqlcmd know not to treat it like char(500) ?
You can use the sqlcmd formatting option -W to remove trailing spaces from the output file.
Read more at this MSDN article.
-W only works with default size of 256 for variable size columns. If you want more than that you got to use -y modifier which will tell you its mutually exclusive with -W. Basically you are out of luck and as in my case file grows from 0.5M to 172M. You have to use other ways to strip white space post file generation. Some PowerShell command or something.
Related
I am trying to extract some records in a file using BCP command in SQL Server. However when the file is generated, there are extract spaces in between the result for each column.
To try I just wrote basic SQL Query as simple as this
select 'ABC', 40, 'TEST','NOTWORKING'
When we copy the output of above query and paste it in Notepad, the output comes as
ABC 40 TEST NOTWORKING
Notice the space between each value? The file that system is generating using BCP command also has same space coming in the output file which is incorrect. What I want to see in the output file is
ABC40TESTNOTWORKING
What must be causing this issue? I am simply amazed to see such weird issue and hoping that it can be fixed by some changes or setting. Please help.
Sample BCP command
EXEC xp_cmdshell 'bcp "select ''ABC'', 40, ''TEST'',''NOTWORKING''" queryout "E:\Testfile.txt" -c -T -S""'
Output in the File - Testfile.txt
ABC 40 TEST NOTWORKING
There are probably tabs between the values. If you want a single value, use concat():
select CONCAT('ABC', 40, 'TEST', 'NOTWORKING')
There's no issue. The command line has no field terminator argument, so the default is used, a tab. That's described in the docs :
-t field_term
Specifies the field terminator. The default is \t (tab character). Use this parameter to override the default field terminator. For more information, see Specify Field and Row Terminators (SQL Server).
If you specify the field terminator in hexadecimal notation in a bcp.exe command, the value will be truncated at 0x00. For example, if you specify 0x410041, 0x41 will be used.
If field_term begins with a hyphen (-) or a forward slash (/), do not include a space between -t and the field_term value.
The link points to an entire article that explains how to use terminators, for each of the bulk operations.
As for the Copy/Paste operation, it has nothing to do with SQL Server. SQL Server has no UI, it's a service. I suspect what was pasted in Notepad was copied from an SSMS grid.
SSMS is a client tool just like any other. When you copy data from it into the clipboard, it decides what to put there and what format to use. That format can be plain text, using spaces and tabs for layout, RTF, HTML etc.
Plain text with tabs as field separators is probably the best choice for any tool, as it preserves the visual layout up to a point and uses only a single character as a separator. A fixed-length layout using spaces could also be used but that would add characters that may well be part of a field.
Encodings and codepages
-c exports the data using the user's default codepage. This means that text stored in varchar fields using a different codepage (collation) may get mangled. Non-visible Unicode characters will also get mangled and appear as something else, or as ?.
-c
Performs the operation using a character data type. This option does not prompt for each field; it uses char as the storage type, without prefixes and with \t (tab character) as the field separator and \r\n (newline character) as the row terminator. -c is not compatible with -w.
It's better to use export the file as UTF16 using -w.
-w
Performs the bulk copy operation using Unicode characters. This option does not prompt for each field; it uses nchar as the storage type, no prefixes, \t (tab character) as the field separator, and \n (newline character) as the row terminator. -w is not compatible with -c.
The codepage can be specified using the -C parameter. -C 1251 for example will export the data using Windows' Latin1 codepage. 1253 will export it using the Greek codepage.
-C { ACP | OEM | RAW | code_page }
Specifies the code page of the data in the data file. code_page is relevant only if the data contains char, varchar, or text columns with character values greater than 127 or less than 32.
SQL Server 2016 and later can also export text as UTF8 with -C 65001. Earlier versions don't support UTF8.
Versions prior to version 13 (SQL Server 2016 (13.x)) do not support code page 65001 (UTF-8 encoding). Versions beginning with 13 can import UTF-8 encoding to earlier versions of SQL Server.
All this is described in bcp's online documentation.
This subject is so important for any database that it has an entire section in the docs, that describes data format and considerations, using format files to specify different settings per column, and guidelines to ensure compatibility with other applications
I have a file that contains the following content (simplified version that demonstrates the problem):
"abc\"def"
I would like to load the literal content of the file into a table without any mangling of the data. Here is what I am currently doing:
CREATE TABLE file_content (content text);
COPY file_content FROM '/path/to/test.txt';
The resulting line in the table is:
"abc"def"
In other words, the backslash was silently dropped/ignored. I've tried the copy with different encodings (UTF8, LATIN1, SQL_ASCII) without any change in behavior.
Also, the ESCAPE and QUOTE options seemed promising at first, but they are only for COPY ... TO.
Is there a way to load raw data from a file without the mangling? I'm using version PostgreSQL version 9.4.6.
You need to change \ to \\. You can use sed for that:
sed -i -- 's/\\/\\\\/g' import.file
Please make sure you have reviewed your data and backuped it before performing operation above.
Context
I am thinking I can solve a problem with the proper creation of a *.bat file.
I am automating a process in a backup program called Acronis Backup and Recovery.
I am able to make a script (jScript) that creates all the syntax except for one part correctly.
In a normal command prompt the command I would run looks like this
acrocmd backup file --include="C:\documents\Gale_thesis.doc" "D:\Sandbox\!oDC!-IMG_0222.MOV" "C:\temp\magnifyReader" --loc="D:\backups" --arc="Backup1a"
The jScript I am creating can generate this with no problem and save as a *.bat file. This can works perfect if my file names are clean. By clean I mean no characters the batch files think are key words and commands.
Anytime I have a word like “copy” or a character like “!” in a file name it fails.
Question
So I am now wondering if loading variables from a text file would do the trick?
I am sure a lot of readers know that when load multiple file/folder paths at the command line you need to surround them with double quotes.
So I need this variable to have the correct syntax to be parsed by the batch file and work like the example when I type it directly at a command prompt.
I had tried to follow info about using for /f etc.
But the examples are not broad enough for me to understand, nobody seems to explain how to use these variables mixed in with other syntax.
I know a little about working with variable in a *.bat file. My jScript application can produce the text in any format a list, escaped, what ever is needed.
Thanks
I might suggest you to take a look at escaping characters
http://www.robvanderwoude.com/escapechars.php
in for loops !var! is used when delayedexpansion is enabled so you might need to escape it
I used the following code provided by Aacini to test the arguments that are being passed
#echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set argCount=0
for %%x in (%*) do (
set /A argCount+=1
set "argVec[!argCount!]=%%~x"
)
echo Number of processed arguments: %argCount%
and since delayedexpansion is enabled I had to escape ! character
arg.bat --include="C:\documents\Gale_thesis.doc" "D:\Sandbox\^^^!oDC^^^!-IMG_0222.MOV" "C:\temp\magnifyReader" --loc="D:\backups" --arc="Backup1a"
Also about the triple escape quotes ^^^
the problem here is that we need to pass two special characters,
1st is the up arrow ^ and 2nd is the exclamation mark !
so the 2nd batch file (the one that reads our arguments) should get ^!
to escape ^ we use ^^ and to escape ! we use ^!
Thanks to Aacini for his code in HERE
I am trying to stream data through an AWK program to a Postgres COPY command. This works great usually. However, in my data recently I have been getting long text stings containing '\.' values.
Postgres Documentation mentions this combination of characters represents the end-of-data marker, http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/sql-copy.html, and I am getting the associated errors when trying to insert with COPY.
My question is, is there a way to turn this off? Perhaps change the end-of-data marker to a different combination of characters? Or do I have to alter/remove these strings before trying to insert using the COPY command?
You can try to filter your data through sed 's:\\:\\\\:g' - this would change every \ in your data to \\, which is a correct escape sequence for single backslash in copy data.
But I think not only backslash would be problematic. Also newlines should be encoded by \n, carriage returns as \r and tabs as \t (tab is a default field delimiter in copy).
I'm trying to query a Sybase ASA 8 database with the iSQL client and export the query results to a text file in CSV format. However the column headings are not exported to the file. There is no special option to specify that, neither in the iSQL settings nor in the OUTPUT statement.
The query and output statement looks like this:
SELECT * FROM SomeTable;
OUTPUT TO 'C:\temp\sometable.csv' FORMAT ASCII DELIMITED BY ';' QUOTE ''
The result is a file like
1;Miller;Steve;1980-06-28
2;Jones;Martha;1965-11-02
3;Waters;Richard;1979-10-15
while I'd like to have
ID;LASTNAME;FIRSTNAME;DOB
1;Miller;Steve;1980-06-28
2;Jones;Martha;1965-11-02
3;Waters;Richard;1979-10-15
Any hints?
I would have suggested to start with another statement:
SELECT 'ID;LASTNAME;FIRSTNAME;DOB' FROM dummy;
OUTPUT TO 'C:\\temp\\sometable.csv' FORMAT ASCII DELIMITED BY ';' QUOTE '';
and add the APPEND option on your query... but I can't get APPEND to work (but I'm using a ASA 11 engine).
Try this one
SELECT 'ID','LASTNAME','FIRSTNAME','DOB' union
SELECT string(ID),LASTNAME,FIRSTNAME,DOB FROM SomeTable;
OUTPUT TO 'C:\\temp\\sometable.csv' FORMAT ASCII DELIMITED BY ';' QUOTE '';
Simply add the option
WITH COLUMN NAMES
to your statement and it adds a header line with the column names.
The complete statement is therefore:
SELECT * FROM SomeTable; OUTPUT TO 'C:\temp\sometable.csv' FORMAT ASCII DELIMITED BY ';' QUOTE '' WITH COLUMN NAMES
See sybase documentation.
I am able to use the isql command to output quoted CSV.
Example
$ isql $DATABASE $USERNAME $PASSWORD -b -d, -q -c
select username, fullname from users
gives the result:
username,fullname
"jdoe","Jane Doe"
"msmith","Mark Smith"
Command-line flags
(copied from the man page)
-b: Run isql in non-interactive batch mode. In this mode, the isql processes its standard input, expecting one SQL command per line.
-dDELIMITER: Delimits columns with delimiter.
-c: Output the names of the columns on the first row. Has any effect only with the -d or -x options.
-q: Wrap the character fields in double quotes.
Escaping Issue
You might run into problems if the query results contain double-quotes, though. The quotes aren't escaped properly, so they result in invalid CSV:
> select 'string","with"quotes' as quoted_string
quoted_string
"string","with"quotes"
You are already familiar with the OUTPUT options. There is no option that gives you what you want.
Ok, the problem is the receiving end does not accept standard CSV files, it needs semi-colons.
If you are scripting, then you are better off getting the output in the format that is closest to what you need, and then awk-ing the output file. Very fast and you can change anything you need. I think your best option is ASCII or default output format, which will provide Comma (not colon) Separated Values, in an ASCII character text file, and includes column Headers. Then use a single awk command to convert the commas to semi-colons.
Found an easier solution, Place the headers in one file say header.txt ( it will contain a single line "col_1|col_2|col_3") then to combine the header file and your output file run:
cat header.txt my_table.txt > my_table_wth_head.txt
isql -S<Server> -D<Database>-U<UserName> -s \; -P<password>\$\1 -w 10000 -iname.sql > output.csv
If you use the FORMAT EXCEL option, it will output the rows with the column name in the first row. Then once you get it into excel you can save it into another format if you need to.
SELECT * FROM SOMETABLE;
OUTPUT TO 'C:\temp\sometable.xls' FORMAT EXCEL DELIMITED BY ';' QUOTE ''
Recently I needed to solve similar issue with some prehistoric ASA7 which does not support the WITH COLUMN NAMES for .CSV output.
The solution for me was the .DBF file, which has the columns structure in it and can be processed automatically, much better than .XLS
SELECT * FROM SomeTable;
OUTPUT TO 'C:\temp\sometable.dbf' FORMAT DBASEIII;