Unloading Character Columns

In unloading files that contain VARCHAR or NVARCHAR columns, trailing blanks are retained in VARCHAR, LVARCHAR, or NVARCHAR fields. Trailing blanks are discarded when CHAR or NCHAR columns are unloaded.

For CHAR, VARCHAR, NCHAR, and NVARCHAR columns, an empty string (a data string of zero length, containing no characters) appears in the UNLOAD TO file as the four bytes “|\ |” (delimiter, backslash, blank space, delimiter).

Some earlier releases of HCL OneDB™ database servers used “||” (consecutive delimiters) to represent the empty string in LOAD and UNLOAD operations. In this release, however, “||” only represents NULL values in CHAR, VARCHAR, LVARCHAR, NCHAR, and NVARCHAR columns.