diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
index 2ea68de912..8ab9ff7eca 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/ref/copy.sgml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
@@ -24,30 +24,30 @@ PostgreSQL documentation
COPY tablename [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
- [ [ WITH ]
+ [ [ WITH ]
[ BINARY ]
[ OIDS ]
[ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter' ]
[ NULL [ AS ] 'null string' ]
[ CSV [ HEADER ]
- [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
+ [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
[ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape' ]
[ FORCE NOT NULL column [, ...] ]
COPY { tablename [ ( column [, ...] ) ] | ( query ) }
TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
- [ [ WITH ]
+ [ [ WITH ]
[ BINARY ]
[ OIDS ]
[ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter' ]
[ NULL [ AS ] 'null string' ]
[ CSV [ HEADER ]
- [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
+ [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
[ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape' ]
[ FORCE QUOTE { column [, ...] | * } ]
-
+
Description
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ COPY { tablename [ (
-
+
Parameters
@@ -215,7 +215,7 @@ COPY { tablename [ (
Specifies that the file contains a header line with the names of each
- column in the file. On output, the first line contains the column
+ column in the file. On output, the first line contains the column
names from the table, and on input, the first line is ignored.
@@ -249,7 +249,7 @@ COPY { tablename [ ( CSV> COPY TO> mode, forces quoting to be
used for all non-NULL> values in each specified column.
NULL> output is never quoted. If *> is specified,
- non-NULL> values for all columns of the table will be
+ non-NULL> values for all columns of the table will be
quoted.
@@ -300,6 +300,10 @@ COPY count
somewhat faster than the normal text mode, but a binary-format
file is less portable across machine architectures and
PostgreSQL versions.
+ Also, the binary format is very data type specific; for example
+ it will not work to output binary data from a smallint> column
+ and read it into an integer> column, even though that would work
+ fine in text format.
@@ -379,7 +383,7 @@ COPY count
-
+
File Formats
@@ -479,7 +483,7 @@ COPY count
- Presently, COPY TO will never emit an octal or
+ Presently, COPY TO will never emit an octal or
hex-digits backslash sequence, but it does use the other sequences
listed above for those control characters.
@@ -498,7 +502,7 @@ COPY count
data newlines and carriage returns to the \n> and
\r> sequences respectively. At present it is
possible to represent a data carriage return by a backslash and carriage
- return, and to represent a data newline by a backslash and newline.
+ return, and to represent a data newline by a backslash and newline.
However, these representations might not be accepted in future releases.
They are also highly vulnerable to corruption if the COPY file is
transferred across different machines (for example, from Unix to Windows
@@ -506,7 +510,7 @@ COPY count
- COPY TO will terminate each row with a Unix-style
+ COPY TO will terminate each row with a Unix-style
newline (\n>>). Servers running on Microsoft Windows instead
output carriage return/newline (\r\n>>), but only for
COPY> to a server file; for consistency across platforms,
@@ -543,7 +547,7 @@ COPY count
non-NULL> values in specific columns.
-
+
The CSV> format has no standard way to distinguish a
NULL> value from an empty string.
PostgreSQL>'s COPY> handles this by
@@ -557,28 +561,28 @@ COPY count
comparisons for specific columns.
-
+
Because backslash is not a special character in the CSV>
format, \.>, the end-of-data marker, could also appear
as a data value. To avoid any misinterpretation, a \.>
- data value appearing as a lone entry on a line is automatically
- quoted on output, and on input, if quoted, is not interpreted as the
+ data value appearing as a lone entry on a line is automatically
+ quoted on output, and on input, if quoted, is not interpreted as the
end-of-data marker. If you are loading a file created by another
- application that has a single unquoted column and might have a
- value of \.>, you might need to quote that value in the
+ application that has a single unquoted column and might have a
+ value of \.>, you might need to quote that value in the
input file.
- In CSV> mode, all characters are significant. A quoted value
- surrounded by white space, or any characters other than
- DELIMITER>, will include those characters. This can cause
- errors if you import data from a system that pads CSV>
- lines with white space out to some fixed width. If such a situation
- arises you might need to preprocess the CSV> file to remove
- the trailing white space, before importing the data into
- PostgreSQL>.
+ In CSV> mode, all characters are significant. A quoted value
+ surrounded by white space, or any characters other than
+ DELIMITER>, will include those characters. This can cause
+ errors if you import data from a system that pads CSV>
+ lines with white space out to some fixed width. If such a situation
+ arises you might need to preprocess the CSV> file to remove
+ the trailing white space, before importing the data into
+ PostgreSQL>.
@@ -600,7 +604,7 @@ COPY count
programs cannot process.
-
+
@@ -747,7 +751,7 @@ OIDs to be shown as null if that ever proves desirable.
-
+
Examples
@@ -806,10 +810,10 @@ ZW ZIMBABWE
-
+
Compatibility
-
+
There is no COPY statement in the SQL standard.