odd problem with external tables. (10.2.0.3 on Red Hat)

From: Stephens, Chris <chris_stephens_at_admworld.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 10:47:36 -0600
Message-ID: <7070047601C21A4CB387D50AD3661F6E06546AA4@050EXCHANGE.research.na.admworld.com>

i've got an external table defined as  

CREATE TABLE "CMAP_WH"."OIL_WORLD_DATA"    ( "MEASURE_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE),

 "GEOGRAPHY_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE), 
 "COMMODITY_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE), 
 "IGNORE" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE), 
 "YEAR" VARCHAR2(4 BYTE), 
 "QUARTER" VARCHAR2(4 BYTE), 
 "MEASURE_VALUE" NUMBER, 
 "STATUS" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE)

   )
   ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL
    ( TYPE ORACLE_LOADER

      DEFAULT DIRECTORY "OIL_WORLD_LOC"
      ACCESS PARAMETERS
      ( RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE

    CHARACTERSET WE8MSWIN1252
    STRING SIZES ARE IN BYTES
    BADFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WOLD_BAD.bad'     DISCARDFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WORL_DISCARD.DIS'     LOGFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WORLD_LOG.log'     FIELDS

      TERMINATED BY '\t'
        OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' AND '"'
      NOTRIM
      (


        "MEASURE_NAME" CHAR,

        "GEOGRAPHY_NAME" CHAR,

        "COMMODITY_NAME" CHAR,

        "IGNORE" CHAR,

        "YEAR" CHAR,

        "QUARTER" CHAR,

        "MEASURE_VALUE" CHAR,

        "STATUS" CHAR

      )
                )
      LOCATION
       ( "OIL_WORLD_LOC":'oil_world.txt'
       )

    )
   REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;   The ignore column corresponds to a blank field (tabtab) in the source file. When I go to access the data, errors are generated in the logfile of the form:  

KUP-04021: field formatting error for field STATUS
KUP-04023: field start is after end of record
KUP-04101: record 1 rejected in file

/rd2/flat_files/oil_world/oil_world.txt

If i go out and manually insert a '*' into that column it works fine.  

Anybody know why oracle isn't just skipping over the blank column?  

Here are the ascii values of the first few rows. The bolded character is what I had to manually insert:  

Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,49,48,51,9,49,55,51,50,46,56,9,42 Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,52,48,54,9,49,51,56,56,46,54,9,42 Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,55,48,57,9,49,52,56,53,46,50,9,42

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Received on Fri Mar 09 2007 - 10:47:36 CST