using sql server 2k, I have been importing csv files reliably for months but
have now been sent a new csv file which contains a quoted field that
contains a comma
e.g... , "abcd, efgh" , .... No previous files had any quoted fields.
bcp does not like this at all. I have searched but have not found how to
resolve this issue. Any comments or suggestions will be much appreciated.

BCP doesn't work well with the CSV format. The solution is to avoid feeding
it any data format that may confuse it. Choose a column separator that is
unique and not embedded, and aviod quoting the columns. In other words, the
most reliable way to use BCP is to have a step that validates the incoming
data and further processes it into a simple format before feeding the data to
BCP.

Linchi

"Dash39" wrote:

Dash39 (Dash39 (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com) writes:
BCP can deal with quoted fields, but the quoting must be applied
consistently. If a field is quoted in one record, but not in the next,
you lose.

BCP works with a stream of bytes, handles both binary files and text files.
Or rather: text files are handled as any other binary file. To use quoted
fields, you need to define your delimiters with the quotes as part of them.
To this end you typically need to use a format file.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel (AT) sommarskog (DOT) se

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