Delimeter files issues

Question

I do have a flat file with not a fixed structure like

 name,phone_num,Address
 bob,8888,2nd main,5th floor,avenue road

Here the last column Address has the value 2nd main,5th floor,avenue road but since the same delimeter , is used for seperating columns also i am not getting any clue how to handle the same.

the structure of flat file may change from file to file. How to handle such kind of flat files while importing using Informatica or SQL * Loader or UTL Files

I will not have any access to flat file just i should read the data from it but i can't edit the data in flat file.

Answer 1

Using SQLLoader

load data
append
into table schema.table
fields terminated by '~'
trailing nullcols
(
   line       BOUNDFILLER,
   name       "regexp_substr(:line, '^[^,]+')",
   phone_num  "regexp_substr(:line, '[^,]+', 1, 2)",
   Address    "regexp_replace(:line, '^.*?,.*?,')"
)

Answer 2

you need to change your source file to enclose the fields in an escape character eg:

name,phone_num,Address
 bob,8888,^2nd main,5th floor,avenue road^

then in sql-loader you'd put:

FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '^'

just pick a delimiter that doesn't normally appear in your data.

Answer 3

If you could get the source data enclosed within double quotes ( or any quotes for that matter) you can make use of 'Optional Quotes' option in Informatica while reading from Flat file