exporting to csv from db2 with no delimiter

Question

I need to export content of a db2 table to CSV file. I read that nochardel would prevent to have the separator between each data but that is not happening.

Suppose I have a table

  MY_TABLE
  -----------------------
  Field_A   varchar(10)
  Field_B   varchar(10)
  Field_A   varchar(10)

I am using this command

  export to myfile.csv of del modified by nochardel select * from MY_TABLE

I get this written into the myfile.csv

 data1    ,data2    ,data3    

but I would like no ',' separator like below

 data1    data2    data3    

Is there a way to do that?

Answer 1

You're asking how to eliminate the comma (,) in a comma separated values file? :-)

NOCHARDEL tells DB2 not to surround character-fields (CHAR and VARCHAR fields) with a character-field-delimiter (default is the double quote " character).

Anyway, when exporting from DB2 using the delimited format, you have to have some kind of column delimiter. There isn't a NOCOLDEL option for delimited files.

The EXPORT utility can't write fixed-length (positional) records - you would have to do this by either:

• Writing a program yourself,
• Using a separate utility (IBM sells the High Performance Unload utility)
• Writing an SQL statement that concatenates the individual columns into a single string:

Here's an example for the last option:

export to file.del 
    of del
    modified by nochardel
    select 
       cast(col1 as char(20))   ||
       cast(intcol as char(10)) || 
       cast(deccol as char(30));

This last option can be a pain since DB2 doesn't have an sprintf() function to help format strings nicely.

Answer 2

Yes there is another way of doing this. I always do this:

1. Put select statement into a file (input.sql):

   select 
       cast(col1 as char(20)),
       cast(col2 as char(10)), 
       cast(col3 as char(30));
   

2. Call db2 clp like this:

   db2 -x -tf input.sql -r result.txt
   

This will work for you, because you need to cast varchar to char. Like Ian said, casting numbers or other data types to char might bring unexpected results.

PS: I think Ian points right on the difference between CSV and fixed-length format ;-)

Answer 3

Use "of asc" instead of "of del". Then you can specify the fixed column locations instead of delimiting.