Export table data in SQL Loader format can generate incorrect control file
121684Mar 21 2006 — edited Apr 28 2008Hi, I think I may have hit a small problem with SQL Developer (both the V1 Production and the .1215 pre-release versions running on the Windows platform) specifically in the 'Export table data in SQL Loader format' area of functionality.
I found that if the table row data being exported contains double quote characters then this appears to cause the SQL Loader control file (.ldr file) being generated to effectively become syntactically incorrect for the data contained therein. This seems to be because the 'optionally enclosed' clause in the loader control file seems to always use the double quote character and this does not seem to be reconfigurable. The impact of this wouldn't necessarily be so bad if the product then parsed the input/output text as it generated the SQL Loader control file and substituted any double quotes found in the actual row data with two double quote characters. This action would allow SQL Loader to then parse the two double quote characters correctly at load time and thus treat any found 'inline' within the row data as actual data rather than simply as delimiter characters thus preserving the double quote characters in the character data being loaded.
Anything anyone can suggest to try as a workaround (other than manually correcting such files)? Is this an already recognised 'limitation' of this functionality (certainly seem to be a few issues with certain other export features/formats).
Thanks.