How to make sqlldr handle mutliple NULL columns

Question

I am using TRAILING NULL COLS in the control file to tell SQL*Loader to treat any relatively positioned columns that are not present in the record as null columns.
But the problem is occuring when there are multiple NULL columns one after the other. In that case SQL*Loader is treating continuous null column as 1 NULL column and then I am getting following message:
ORA-12899: value too large for column
And reason being wrong value is being tried to inserted in wrong column.
How can I stop SQL*Loader from combining multiple and continuous NULL columns and basically to make it treat each of them separately.

Answer 1

I have been able to take care of the issue using the NULLIF attribute. Here is how my control file looks now:
LOAD DATA
INFILE 'tab_sal_ldr.tab'
INSERT INTO TABLE SQL_TAB_LDR
REPLACE
FIELDS TERMINATED BY "\t"
TRAILING NULLCOLS
(COL1 CHAR,
COL2 INTEGER EXTERNAL NULLIF COL2=BLANKS,
COL3 FLOAT EXTERNAL NULLIF COL3=BLANKS,
COL4 DATE EXTERNAL NULLIF COL4=BLANKS)
However it is rejecting the rows having all NULLs. Is it possible to upload rows having all column values as NULL.
Following is the snippet from the log:
2 Rows not loaded because all fields were null.
Edited by: Parag Kalra on May 4, 2010 3:31 AM