You can use a text editor to change a Bulk Loader description (.fd) file. The table below lists the tasks and actions.

Table 1. Modifying the description file
Task Action
Include comments in the .fd file. Place a pound sign (#) at the beginning of each line.
Include the description of multiple tables in one description file. Separate tables with a period on a line by itself.
Skip a field. Replace the field name with a caret ( ^ ).

By default, the Bulk Loader adds .d and .e extensions to the table name to produce the two file names it requires to operate. It assumes that both of the files (the data file and the error file) begin with the table name. If this assumption is false, you must specify the different filenames.

For example, if you dump the customer table into cust.d instead of customer.d, you must specify the name cust.d in the bulk loader description file. Otherwise, the Bulk Loader searches the current directory for customer.d. The following figure shows a modified .fd file.

#This is an example
customer   cust.d cust.e
  Cust-num
  Name
  ^
  ^
   City
  St
  ^
  Phone 
.
item
  Item-num
  Idesc
.
order
  Order-num
  ^
  Name