READ_FILE Function

Reads a file line-by-line and returns it in a table. This function is used in the FROM clause of a SELECT statement and can participate in joins as if it were a table.

Syntax

READ_FILE(file-path, [file-encoding])

Parameters

• file-path: text
  The absolute path to the text file to read.
• file-encoding: integer (optional, 0-65535, default: 0)
  Indicates the text encoding to use when reading the file. Specify 0 to detect the encoding automatically. Any nonzero integer is treated as a Windows code page number. See Character Encodings in CSV and Text Files for a list of these code page numbers.
  

Return Value

A table with the following columns:

Column name	Example value
number	1
line	"First line of the file"

Example

-- Returns a table containing the last 50 lines
-- in "file.txt" in reverse order.
SELECT *
FROM READ_FILE('C:\temp\file.txt')
ORDER BY number DESC
LIMIT 50;

-- Returns a table containing the contents of
-- "ShiftJIS.txt", which is read using the Japanese
-- Shift-JIS encoding (code page 932).
SELECT * FROM READ_FILE('C:\ShiftJIS.txt', 932);