ASA Database Administration Guide
  Database Options
    Alphabetical list of options

INPUT_FORMAT option [ISQL]

Function 

Sets the default data format expected by the INPUT statement.

Allowed values 

String. See below.

Default 

ASCII

Description 

Certain file formats contain information about column names and types. Using this information, the INPUT statement will create the database table if it does not already exist. This is a very easy way to load data into the database. The formats that have enough information to create the table are: DBASEII, DBASEIII, FOXPRO, and LOTUS.

Allowable input formats are:

• ASCII    Input lines are assumed to be ASCII characters, one row per line, with values separated by commas. Alphabetic strings may be enclosed in apostrophes (single quotes) or quotation marks (double quotes). Strings containing commas must be enclosed in either single or double quotes. If single or double quotes are used, double the quote character to use it within the string. Optionally, you can use the DELIMITED BY clause to specify a different delimiter string than the default, which is a comma (,).

  Three other special sequences are also recognized. The two characters \n represent a newline character, \\ represents a single backslash character, and the sequence \xDD represents the character with hexadecimal code DD.

• DBASE    The file is in dBASE II or dBASE III format. Interactive SQL will attempt to determine which format, based on information in the file. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created.

• DBASEII    The file is in dBASE II format. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created.

• DBASEIII    The file is in dBASE III format. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created.

• EXCEL    Input file is in the format of Microsoft Excel 2.1. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created.

• FIXED    Input lines are in fixed format. The width of the columns can be specified using the COLUMN WIDTHS clause. If they are not specified, column widths in the file must be the same as the maximum number of characters required by any value of the corresponding database column's type.

• FOXPRO    The file is in FoxPro format. The FoxPro memo field is different than the dBASE memo field. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created.

• LOTUS    The file is a Lotus WKS format worksheet. INPUT assumes that the first row in the Lotus WKS format worksheet consists of column names. If the table doesn't exist, it will be created. In this case, the types and sizes of the columns created may not be correct because the information in the file pertains to a cell, not to a column.