Question

Trying to import the EPF files from Apple using BCP. Apple use characters \1 and \2 as field and row terminators. Unforunately these don’t appears to be supported as BCP / BULK INSERT field terminators, from the documentation:

Note Only the t, n, r, \, and 0 characters work with the backslash
escape character to produce a control character.

Is there alternative to BCP & BULK INSERT I could use to import the files in? (apart from writing a utility to process the files myself)

Answer 1

For BULK INSERT You could work around this limitation with a dynamic query. In this example the fieldterminator is CHAR(15):

DECLARE @SQL NVARCHAR(4000) = 
'bulk insert MyTable
from ''C:\spaced.txt''
with (
    firstrow=2
    , rowterminator=''\n''
    , fieldterminator='''+CHAR(15)+'''
)'
EXEC SP_EXECUTESQL @SQL;