(bounced last time..2nd try) ...odd problem with external tables. (10.2.0.3 on Red Hat)

i've got an external table defined as

CREATE TABLE "CMAP_WH"."OIL_WORLD_DATA" ( "MEASURE_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE),
"GEOGRAPHY_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE),

"COMMODITY_NAME" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE),

"IGNORE" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE),

"YEAR" VARCHAR2(4 BYTE),

"QUARTER" VARCHAR2(4 BYTE),

"MEASURE_VALUE" NUMBER,

"STATUS" VARCHAR2(50 BYTE)
)

ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL ( TYPE ORACLE_LOADER DEFAULT DIRECTORY "OIL_WORLD_LOC" ACCESS PARAMETERS ( RECORDS DELIMITED BY NEWLINE CHARACTERSET WE8MSWIN1252 STRING SIZES ARE IN BYTES BADFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WOLD_BAD.bad'

DISCARDFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WORL_DISCARD.DIS' LOGFILE OIL_WORLD_LOC:'OIL_WORLD_LOG.log'

FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\t'

OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"' AND '"' NOTRIM (

"MEASURE_NAME" CHAR,

"GEOGRAPHY_NAME" CHAR,

"COMMODITY_NAME" CHAR,

"IGNORE" CHAR,

"YEAR" CHAR,

"QUARTER" CHAR,

"MEASURE_VALUE" CHAR,

"STATUS" CHAR
)

)

LOCATION ( "OIL_WORLD_LOC":'oil_world.txt'

)

)

REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED; The ignore column corresponds to a blank field (tabtab) in the source file. When I go to access the data, errors are generated in the logfile of the form:

KUP-04021: field formatting error for field STATUS

KUP-04023: field start is after end of record

KUP-04101: record 1 rejected in file
/rd2/flat_files/oil_world/oil_world.txt

If i go out and manually insert a '*' into that column it works fine.

Anybody know why oracle isn't just skipping over the blank column?

Here are the ascii values of the first few rows. The bolded character is what I had to manually insert:

Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,49,48,51,9,49,55,51,50,46,56,9,42

Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,52,48,54,9,49,51,56,56,46,54,9,42

Typ=1 Len=40:
83,84,79,67,75,9,69,85,45,50,53,9,83,111,121,98,101,97,110,115,9,42,9,50 ,48,48,53,9,55,48,57,9,49,52,56,53,46,50,9,42

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