topic Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value in Talend Studio

tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 12:13:34 GMT

Hi there,

I'm using tFileInputDelimited to read csv file :

CSV file data

schema

As we can see in above screenshots, CustomerNumber field contains alphanumeric values(some might be numeric and some might be string). I want the values as it is so I used String type.

But why its giving '0000001' instead of '1' ?

Output

Please help. Thanks !

Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 12:16:30 GMT

You are looking at the CSV file in Excel and not in it's untainted form. Can you look at it using something like notepad? I suspect you will see that Excel is altering the value to remove the zeros

Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

cterenzi — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 13:47:09 GMT

What I wouldn't give for a way to turn off that "feature"...

Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:21:09 GMT

You are right @rhall. Checked with notepad and 0's are prepended there. Thanks for pointing me out. Such a silly thing !!

Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:27:58 GMT

No problem. It is also wise to avoid opening CSV files in Excel. Excel can completely change the CSV format if you save them within Excel. This can cause big issues with debugging

Re: tFileInputDelimited - string type, numeric value

cterenzi — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:07:11 GMT

Some other issues with opening csv files directly with Excel:

loss of precision of large integers or extended decimal values
changes to date formats
loss of quote enclosures
loss of special characters (depends on the default character set used by Excel)

If you have no alternative means to examine a csv file, at the very least you should "Import" the data. In Excel 2010, this is done from the Data tab -> Get External Data -> From Text

Import everything as text to see what it (almost) looks like in the file. You still won't see quote enclosures, but you'll at least avoid issues like 0000001 being represented as 1 and get to see the date formats in use by the file.