Question

In sqlite, is it possible to query data that contains unescaped unmatched quotation marks?

For example, the separator is set to |.

starships|spacecr"aft|snoo"py|rhythm

Using insert is not the problem, that works fine. The problem is delimiting elements with .import. To illustrate my point, I created a file called test.dat with the contents:

starships|spacecr"aft|snoo"py|rhythm

Then execute the following:

sqlite> create table t (a,b,c,d);
sqlite> .separator '|'
sqlite> .import test.dat t
Error: test.dat line 1: expected 4 columns of data but found 3

Answer 1

Yes, that’s possible:

sqlite> create table t (f1 string, f2 string, f3 string, f4 string);
sqlite> insert into t values ('starships', 'spacecr"aft', 'snoo"py', 'rhythm');
sqlite> select * from t;
starships|spacecr"aft|snoo"py|rhythm
sqlite> select * from t where f2 = 'spacecr"aft';
starships|spacecr"aft|snoo"py|rhythm