Escape Pipe in SQL Loader - oracle

Question

I have a pipe delimited file which has to be loaded via SQL*Loader in Oracle.
My control file looks like this:
LOAD DATA
REPLACE
INTO TABLE1
FIELDS TERMINATED BY '|'
TRAILING NULLCOLS
(
ID "TRIM(:ID)",
TEXT "NVL(TRIM(:TEXT),' ')"
)
The TEXT column in the data file can contain text with "|"- i.e., delimiter too.
How can I accept pipe in the TEXT column?

Answer 1

You can't escape the delimiter; but if you want everything up to the first pipe to be the ID and everything after the first pipe to be TEXT, you could treat the record in the data file as a single field and split it using SQL functions, e.g.:
LOAD DATA
INFILE ...
REPLACE
INTO TABLE TABLE1
TRAILING NULLCOLS
(
ID CHAR(4000) "regexp_replace(:ID, '^(.*?)(\\|(.*))?$', '\\1')",
TEXT EXPRESSION "regexp_replace(:ID, '^(.*?)(\\|(.*))?$', '\\3')"
)
There is no FIELDS clause.
The ID is initially up to 4000 characters from the line (just a large value to hopefully capture any data you have). A regex replace is then applied to that; the pattern defines a first group as any characters (non-greedy), optionally followed by a second group comprising a pipe and a third inner group of zero or more characters after that pipe. The original value is replaced by group 1.
The TEXT is defined as an EXPRESSION, meaning it isn't obtained directly from the file; instead the same regex pattern is applied to the original ID value, but now that is replaced by the third group, which is everything after the first pipe (if there is one).
An equivalent in plain SQL as a demo would be:
with data (id) as (
select '123|test 1' from dual
union all
select '234|test 2|with pipe' from dual
union all
select '345|test 3|with|multiple|pipes|' from dual
union all
select null from dual
union all
select '678' from dual
union all
select '789|' from dual
)
select id as original,
regexp_replace(ID, '^(.*?)(\|(.*))?$', '\1') as id,
regexp_replace(ID, '^(.*?)(\|(.*))?$', '\3') as text
from data;
which gives:
ORIGINAL ID TEXT
------------------------------- ---- ------------------------------
123|test 1 123 test 1
234|test 2|with pipe 234 test 2|with pipe
345|test 3|with|multiple|pipes| 345 test 3|with|multiple|pipes|
567 567
678| 678
If you don't need to worry about records without that first pipe, or with that first pipe but followed by nothing, then the regex could be simpler:
(
ID CHAR(4000) "regexp_replace(:ID, '^(.*?)\\|(.*)$', '\\1')",
TEXT EXPRESSION "regexp_replace(:ID, '^(.*?)\\|(.*)$', '\\2')"
)