5.2.2.2 File Name, Pattern and Prefix Examples

Examples to understand the use of name, pattern and prefix. For simplicity, this ignores the file location details.

Consider a directory with the name input, containing 204 files with filenames as follows:

• 100 files with names in a sequence from file00.tbl to file99.tbl.

• 104 files with names in a sequence from fileaa.tbl to fileaz.tbl, fileba.tbl to filebz.tbl, fileca.tbl to filecz.tbl, and fileda.tbl to filedz.tbl.

To load all 204 files from the input directory, using a prefix :

"file": [{"prefix": "input/"}]

To load individual files that do not fit into a convenient sequence, using one or more specific filenames and their directories in the name parameter:

"file": [{"name": "input/file25.tbl"}, {"name": "input/fileck.tbl"}]

To load specific file name sequences, using a regular expression pattern:

The regular expression syntax states that certain characters require an escape character, see: Regular Expression Syntax.

The escape character is the backslash character, and it is a reserved character in both JSON and MySQL. Therefore, it is necessary to escape the backslash character twice, and specify \\ for JSON, and \\ for MySQL.

However, the regular expression escape sequence depends upon the NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES SQL mode:

• Use \\. to escape a period if NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES is enabled.

• Use \\\\. to escape a period if NO_BACKSLASH_ESCAPES is not enabled. The following examples use this sequence because it is the default mode.

To load all 100 files with a numeric suffix:

"file": [{"pattern" : "input/file\\\\d+\\\\.tbl"}]

To load all 104 files with an alphabetical suffix:

"file": [{"pattern" : "input/file[a-z]+\\\\.tbl"}]

To load 10 files with sequence, file00.tbl, file10.tbl ... file90.tbl:

"file": [{"pattern" : "input/file\\\\d0\\\\.tbl"}]

To load 24 files with sequence, fileaa.tbl to fileaf.tbl, fileba.tbl to filebf.tbl, fileca.tbl to filecf.tbl, and fileda.tbl to filedf.tbl,

"file": [{"pattern" : "input/file[a-d][a-f]\\\\.tbl"}]