ADO ConnectionString TextFile
This page is still a work in progress.
Text files files accessed via ADO will be read only. ADO does not have a driver that supports writing to or creating text files.
Arguments
The Provider supports the following arguments:
- FMT
- Using FMT=Delimited tells ADO that the text file is comma delimited. Although the comma is probably the most widely-used delimiter for text files, it's not the only one. Another popular delimiter is the TAB. In that case you would use FMT=TabDelimited. There are other options, but these are the most common variants you'll run into.
| Format | Description | Schema.ini Syntax | Connection String Syntax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tab Delimited | Fields in the file are separated by tabs | Format = TabDelimited | FMT=TabDelimited |
| CSV Delimited | Fields in the file are separated by commas (note that there should not be a space between the comma and the start of the next field name or value) | Format = CSVDelimited | FMT=CSVDelimited |
| Custom Delimited | Fields in the file are separated by some character other than a tab or a comma (with one exception: you can't use the double-quote as a delimiter). For example, the asterisk is used as the delimiter | Format = Delimited(*) | FMT=Delimited(*) |
| Fixed-Length | Fields in a file take up a specific number of characters. If a value is too long, "extra" characters are chopped off the end. If a value is too short, blank spaces are appended to it to make it fill out the requisite number of characters. | Format=FixedLength | FMT=FixedLength |
- HDR
- Specifying HDR=YES means that the test file contains a header row. A header row simply means that the first row in the text file is a list of fields, with all subsequent rows containing the actual data.