Example DEL file

Following is an example of a DEL file. Each line ends with a line feed sequence (on the Windows operating system, each line ends with a carriage return/line feed sequence).

   "Smith, Bob",4973,15.46
   "Jones, Bill",12345,16.34
   "Williams, Sam",452,193.78

The following example illustrates the use of non-delimited character strings. The column delimiter has been changed to a semicolon, because the character data contains a comma.

   Smith, Bob;4973;15.46
   Jones, Bill;12345;16.34
   Williams, Sam;452;193.78
Note:
  1. A space (X'20') is never a valid delimiter.
  2. Spaces that precede the first character, or that follow the last character of a cell value, are discarded during import. Spaces that are embedded in a cell value are not discarded.
  3. A period (.) is not a valid character string delimiter, because it conflicts with periods in time stamp values.
  4. For pure DBCS (graphic), mixed DBCS, and EUC, delimiters are restricted to the range of x00 to x3F, inclusive.
  5. For DEL data specified in an EBCDIC code page, the delimiters might not coincide with the shift-in and shift-out DBCS characters.
  6. On the Windows operating system, the first occurrence of an end-of-file character (X'1A') that is not within character delimiters indicates the end-of-file. Any subsequent data is not imported.
  7. A null value is indicated by the absence of a cell value where one would normally occur, or by a string of spaces.
  8. Since some products restrict character fields to 254 or 255 bytes, the export utility generates a warning message whenever a character column of maximum length greater than 254 bytes is selected for export. The import utility accommodates fields that are as long as the longest LONG VARCHAR and LONG VARGRAPHIC columns.