How Do you load a fixed width data file using SQL*Loader which has no Line Delimiter but has fields with newline characters?

Question

I need to load a flat file into an oracle database using SQL*Loader.
The flat file contains a field that contains newline characters as valid data.
The file is NOT line delimited by a newline character.

How would I Modify the following control file to do this?

LOAD DATA
 INFILE 'mydata.dat'
 INTO TABLE emp
 ( field1    POSITION(1:4)   INTEGER EXTERNAL,
   field2    POSITION(6:15)  CHAR,
   big_field POSITION(17:7000) CHAR
 )

Note: I have no control over the format of the incoming file.

Note: ... indicates that the data continues to the end of the field  

example:  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
...  

result:  
field1: 1234  
field2: 67890abcde
big_field: ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz  
...

Answer 1

The problem here is that each line will be interpreted as a record in the flat file rather than a field. I am guessing that you may have to re format the file with a delimiter such as a comma or a tab or a pipe '|' with the '\n' so that the Loader interprets it as a one single record. Any occurrence of a new line '\n' will be treated as a new record I presume. refer to the link below-

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28319/ldr_concepts.htm#sthref718

You cannot the format of the incoming file, but you can read that file and create a proper formatted mydata.dat for the SQL Loader. The whole point is to make the Loader understand 'what is your record terminator?', other wise your file would be like one huge record.

Answer 2

You can specify the position of the fields:

load data
append
into table TABLE_NAME
(
FIELD1 POSITION(51:55),
FIELD2 POSITION(60:67),
FIELD3 EXPRESSION "CONSTANT_VALUE",
FIELD4 SEQUENCE,
FIELD5 EXPRESSION "current_timestamp(3)",
)

In the above example FIELD1 goes from char 51 to 55 (included), FIELD2 from 60 to 67.

FIELD3 is fixed to a value we want, FIELD4 generates an internal sequence and FIELD5 gets the current timestamp.

Answer 3

Never tried it myself but apparently, you need to find out what they used as a row delimiter. and pass in that char as hex. This one picks up 5E which is #

load data infile test.dat "str X'5E'"

No idea what versions it's applicable to though, might be worth hitting the F1 key and looking for row delimiter..

???? There's no row delimiter. Oh have to write something to but one in then, if you want to use something like SQL*Loader.