Sybase 12.4.2 manual 177, Binary with Null Byte Prefix 1 2 4 ’delimiter-string’

CHAPTER 5 Moving Data In and Out of Databases

For each column, you can specify a column-spec. If you omit this option, the format information in the load-optionsapplies to this column. The column- spec and load-optionsformat information tell Adaptive Server IQ what type of data to expect, and how to convert it into a compatible data format if necessary.

Syntax for the column-specis:

column-spec:

{ASCII ( input-width )

BINARY [ WITH NULL BYTE ] PREFIX { 1 2 4 } ’delimiter-string’

DATE ( input-date-format ) TIME ( input-time-format ) DATETIME ( input-datetime-format ) }

[ NULL ( { BLANKS ZEROS ’literal’, ... } ) ]

You can specify the following types of data in the column-spec:

•Data with bytes of fixed length. Although specified by the keyword ASCII, any 8-bit characters may be used, and for 16-bit character sets, two 8-bit characters are used for each 16-bit character. No code conversion is performed for char and varchar fields except truncation, blank stripping, or blank padding. ASCII is also used to fill numeric data, time, and date- time fields. In each case, the conversion is the same if the value were first inserted as a character field, then cast to the data type of the column in the table. The input-widthvalue is an integer value indicating the fixed width in bytes of the input field in every record.

•Binary fields that use a number of PREFIX bytes (1, 2, or 4) to specify the length of the binary input. The BINARY keyword indicates that data is already converted to the internal form (except for when the byte-order load option is specified.

•Variable-length characters delimited by a separator. You specify the delimiter-stringas a string of one to four ASCII characters, or any 8–bit hexadecimal ASCII code that represents a single, non-printing character. The delimiter-string must be enclosed in single quotes. For example, you specify:

•'\x09' to represent a tab as the terminator.

•'\x00' for a null terminator (no visible terminator as in “C” strings).

•'\x0a' for a newline character as the terminator. You can also use the special character combination of \n for newline.

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