The following properties determine the parsing rules for delimiting the record.

• fielddelim specifies one or more ASCII or hexadecimal characters as the value for the field delimiter

• recorddelim specifies one or more ASCII or hexadecimal characters as the value for the record delimiter

• quote specifies one or more ASCII or hexadecimal characters to use for quoted values

• nullindicator specifies one or more ASCII or hexadecimal characters to use for NULL values

You can define escape characters for the delimiters so they will be replaced if the characters are found in the text. For example if a backslash and apostrophe (\') are specified, then the input "They used Mike\'s truck" is translated to "They used Mike's truck". Or if two quotes ("") are specified, "They call him ""Big Al""" is translated to "They call him "Big Al"".

Data values may be present in the record without quotes, but the system only removes escape characters within quoted values. A non-quoted string that matches a null indicator is treated as null.