Hello,
I recently had to make a table export to migrate data from one database to another. The migration would be done by a DBA. As you might know, the typical DBA refuses to use anything else but SQL Plus on the UNIX command line, and our DBA's are no exception
The DBA reported an error message: SP2-0734: unknown command beginning "...prompt ..."
It turns out that the exportfile begins with EF BB BF, commonly known as Byte Order Mark (BOM). The command window in PL/SQL Developer doesn't mind the BOM but SQL Plus does. After removing the BOM in a HEX editor, SQL Plus processes the file without any errors.
Since UTF-8 encoding doesn't require a BOM, my suggestion is to save the export file without it, so the export can be used outside PL/SQL Developer too.
Thank you in advance.
Michael Doel
Truston Solutions B.V.
I recently had to make a table export to migrate data from one database to another. The migration would be done by a DBA. As you might know, the typical DBA refuses to use anything else but SQL Plus on the UNIX command line, and our DBA's are no exception
The DBA reported an error message: SP2-0734: unknown command beginning "...prompt ..."
It turns out that the exportfile begins with EF BB BF, commonly known as Byte Order Mark (BOM). The command window in PL/SQL Developer doesn't mind the BOM but SQL Plus does. After removing the BOM in a HEX editor, SQL Plus processes the file without any errors.
Since UTF-8 encoding doesn't require a BOM, my suggestion is to save the export file without it, so the export can be used outside PL/SQL Developer too.
Thank you in advance.
Michael Doel
Truston Solutions B.V.
Last edited:
