MySQL Bugs: #12851: Load into

Bug #12851	Load into
Submitted:	29 Aug 2005 17:29	Modified:	17 Dec 2010 13:26
Reporter:	Andre Timmer	Email Updates:
Status:	Won't fix	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: DML	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	4 + 5	OS:	Any (All)
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
Fixed fields:
- this is not supported

Separated fields:
- empty fields are inserted as empty string instead of null

  This is not what a database developer is expecting. 
  It's also not always possible to have a data supplier inserting null of \N into the data file to be loaded.

These options would have saved me considerable time.

How to repeat:
.

Suggested fix:
Fixed fields:
- this is unfortunately still a common case, support for this would be nice

Separated fields:
- syntacs enhancements, e.g.: 
  - null if zerolength
  - null if whitespace or zerolength

  So instead of having to write "select .. from .. where field2 = ''" a more query like "select .. from .. where field2 is null" would be possible.

Charset is now set at a global level. This is inflexible, a charset option as part of the "load" command would be an improvement.

Many thanks for writing a feature request.
Unfortunately, what you describe here is not SQL standard conform and MySQL tries to be SQL standard conform.