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How to Load Flat Files Containing Extended Characters into Oracle (Doc ID 100033.1)

Last updated on DECEMBER 11, 2023

Applies to:

Oracle Database - Personal Edition - Version 8.0.3.0 and later
Oracle Database - Standard Edition - Version 8.0.3.0 and later
Gen 1 Exadata Cloud at Customer (Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Machine) - Version N/A and later
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Database Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Cloud Exadata Service - Version N/A and later
Generic UNIX

Symptoms

You have a flat file with extended character data which you need to load into an Oracle database.  You have determined that the database is capable of handling the extended characters since the database characterset is a superset of the data character encoding scheme:

Shows NLS_CHARACTERSET is equal to UTF8, or some other extended characterset such as WE8ISO8859P1.

As an exmaple, assume you are using SQL*Loader with the following environment variable set:

  NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8

You will likely find that after the load is complete, your data comes back as unrecognized characters.

Changes

 

Cause

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