SQL loader with *.csv file

Question

Good morning,
I have a *.CVS file containing data like this:
A123456789,Ah Tong Station,Jalan Dungun
I would like insert the data into a table that returns 1 row for each value
id outlet_name addr_1A123456789 Ah Tong Station Jalan Dungun
etc
In the stored procedure, SQL loader, I used
Insert into XXXXX values
(SUBSTR(input_buffer, 1, 10),
SUBSTR(input_buffer, 11, 60),
SUBSTR(input_buffer, 61, 110);
but the problem is that insertion of the outlet_name and addr_1 will not follow the subcripts that provided. Instead in gave an output like that:
id outlet_name addr_1
A123456789 ,Ah Tong Station,Jalan Dungun NULL
Hope to get some advice asap. Thanks. :)
Pauline

Answer 1

Why not use the SQL*Loader proper to load this in to your table? It will be significantly faster than anything you could do in PL/SQL, especially if your volumes increase. And it will take care of the parsing for you, as long as you tell it the field delimiter. You've already seen that you can't rely on fixed widths when using delimited data.
Given this data...
A123456789,Ah Tong Station,Jalan Dungun
A234,Some Station,Some Place...the following SQL*Loader control file ( stored in a file called mytable.ctl ) will load your table ( note I've used truncate - you could also append )...
load data
infile 'mydata.csv'
truncate
into table mytable
fields terminated by ','
(  id
,  outlet_name
,  addr_1
)This is invoked using the following:-
sqlldr userid/password@tns control=mytable.ctlThe results are:-
SQL> select * from mytable;
ID                             OUTLET_NAME                    ADDR_1
A123456789                     Ah Tong Station                Jalan Dungun
A234                           Some Station                   Some PlaceYou will find this much easier. Of course, you could always avoid the database altogether if you don't need to actually store this data. You could just parse the source .csv ( if you are on UNIX this will be really easy using an awk one-liner ) and write it to an output file.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Regards
Adrian