The default column or field delimiter is the horizontal TAB character (0x09) for text files and the comma character (0x2C) for CSV files. You can declare a single character delimiter using the DELIMITER clause of COPY, CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE or gpload when you define your data format. The delimiter character must appear between any two data value fields. Do not place a delimiter at the beginning or end of a row. For example, if the pipe character ( | ) is your delimiter:
data value 1|data value 2|data value 3
The following command shows the use of the pipe character as a column delimiter:
=# CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE ext_table (name text, date date)
LOCATION ('gpfdist://<hostname>/filename.txt)
FORMAT 'TEXT' (DELIMITER '|');
Parent topic: Formatting Data Files
