Is it possible to tell Sqlite to ignore trailing field separator when using import command?

Question

I want to load a table with a text file delimited by pipes

Table
--------------------------

Id + Employee + Department

--------------------------

File

0|Some Name|Some department|
1|Another Name|Another department|

I use the .separator command to set the "|" separator and then execute the .import command.

I receive the following error Error: EMP.TXT line 1: expected 3 columns of data but found 4.

I want to know if ther is some option in sqlite3 to ignore the trailing pipe.

Answer 1

You could import into a temporary table with a dummy column:

CREATE TEMP TABLE DummyTable(id, emp, dep, nothing);
.import importfile DummyTable
INSERT INTO MyTable SELECT id, emp, dep FROM DummyTable;
DROP TABLE DummyTable;

Answer 2

You could remove the superfluous pipe before importing:

< importfile sed 's/|$//' | sqlite3 my.db ".import /dev/stdin MyTable"