Leading Whitespace

If the previous field is TERMINATED BY WHITESPACE, then all whitespace after the field acts as the delimiter. The next field starts at the next nonwhitespace character. Figure 10-5 illustrates this case.

Figure 10-5 Fields Terminated by Whitespace

Description of "Figure 10-5 Fields Terminated by Whitespace"

This situation occurs when the previous field is explicitly specified with the TERMINATED BY WHITESPACE clause, as shown in the example. It also occurs when you use the global FIELDS TERMINATED BY WHITESPACE clause.

Leading whitespace is also removed from a field when optional enclosure delimiters are specified but not present.

Whenever optional enclosure delimiters are specified, SQL*Loader scans forward, looking for the first enclosure delimiter. If an enclosure delimiter is not found, then SQL*Loader skips over whitespace, eliminating it from the field. The first nonwhitespace character signals the start of the field. This situation is shown in Field 2 in Figure 10-6. (In Field 1 the whitespace is included because SQL*Loader found enclosure delimiters for the field.)

Figure 10-6 Fields Terminated by Optional Enclosure Delimiters

Description of "Figure 10-6 Fields Terminated by Optional Enclosure Delimiters"

Unlike the case when the previous field is TERMINATED BY WHITESPACE, this specification removes leading whitespace even when a starting position is specified for the current field.