FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

bcp is broken for NULL character data.  I don't know when that happened or
if it ever worked.  Our unit test is more of a smoke test; it doesn't
ensure the data make a happy round trip.  

Unfortunately, things go wonky on the way in.  I added a query to the unit
test that groups and counts the values for three columns.  There should be
only 2 distinct values: the test data value, and NULL.  Alas:

col              nrows       len         value     
---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------
nullable_char    1           NULL        NULL      
nullable_char    1           1           a         
nullable_char    10          4                 
nullable_char    5           6           a char    
nullable_int     11          NULL        NULL      
nullable_int     6           4           1234      
nullable_varchar 1           NULL        NULL      
nullable_varchar 1           1           a         
nullable_varchar 10          4                 
nullable_varchar 5           9           a varchar 

The only NULL values in the char/varchar columns were inserted by an
INSERT statement in the test.  

The 10 rows of length 4 should be NULL, just as with the integer column.  

Extraction is no better, though.  If you run src/dblib/unittests/bpc.c in
gdb and stop it before it drops its table, then do:

        $ freebcp all_types_bcp_unittest out \
        all_types_bcp_unittest.dat -c -t\\  -S [...]
and     
        $ sed -ne 3p all_types_bcp_unittest.dat 

1\a char    \a varchar\2003-12-17 15:44:00.000\2003-12-17
15:44:00.000\12.34\12.34\12.34\12.34\12.34\12.34\1234\1234\123\\\\\\\\\\\
\\

$ sed -ne 3p all_types_bcp_unittest.dat | hexdump -C
00000000  31 5c 61 20 63 68 61 72  20 20 20 20 5c 61 20 76  |1\a char   
\a v|
00000010  61 72 63 68 61 72 5c 32  30 30 33 2d 31 32 2d 31 
|archar\2003-12-1|
00000020  37 20 31 35 3a 34 34 3a  30 30 2e 30 30 30 5c 32  |7
15:44:00.000\2|
00000030  30 30 33 2d 31 32 2d 31  37 20 31 35 3a 34 34 3a  |003-12-17
15:44:|
00000040  30 30 2e 30 30 30 5c 31  32 2e 33 34 5c 31 32 2e 
|00.000\12.34\12.|
00000050  33 34 5c 31 32 2e 33 34  5c 31 32 2e 33 34 5c 31 
|34\12.34\12.34\1|
00000060  32 2e 33 34 5c 31 32 2e  33 34 5c 31 32 33 34 5c 
|2.34\12.34\1234\|
00000070  31 32 33 34 5c 31 32 33  5c 00 00 00 00 5c 00 00 
|1234\123\....\..|
                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^
00000080  00 00 5c 5c 5c 5c 5c 5c  5c 5c 5c 5c 5c 0a       
|..\\\\\\\\\\\.|

Those NULLs don't belong there.  Nulls are represented by adjacent
separators.  

I tried to compare my results to the output of Sybase's bcp utility, but
that's another story.  

--jkl