You could do something like that. However you can structure the table as: CREATE TABLE X ( Map<String,String> stuff) CREATE TABLE X ( List<String> stuff)
You can then define a viww over these structures that allow you to cherry pick the fields you want. Edward On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 1:03 PM, Keith Wiley <kwi...@keithwiley.com> wrote: > Wrapping hive around existing csv files consists of manually naming and > typing every column during the creation command. I have several csv tables > and some of them have a ton of columns. I would love a way to create hive > tables which automatically infers the column types by attempting various type > conversions or regex matches on the data (say the first row). What would be > even cooler is if the first row could actually be interpreted differently > from the rest of the table...as a set of string labels to name the columns > while the types could be automatically inferred from, say, the *second* row. > These csv files are currently of this format, with the first row naming the > columns. > > Does this make sense? > > Now, I'm sure that hive doesn't support this yet -- and I admit it is a > somewhat esoteric desire on my part -- but I'm curious how others would > suggest approaching it? I'm thinking of writing a separate isolated program > that reads the first two rows of a csv file and dumps a text string of column > names and types in the correct syntax for a hive external table creation > statement which I would then copy/paste into hive...I was just hoping for a > simpler solution. > > Thoughts? > > Thanks. > > ________________________________________________________________________________ > Keith Wiley kwi...@keithwiley.com keithwiley.com > music.keithwiley.com > > "You can scratch an itch, but you can't itch a scratch. Furthermore, an itch > can > itch but a scratch can't scratch. Finally, a scratch can itch, but an itch > can't > scratch. All together this implies: He scratched the itch from the scratch > that > itched but would never itch the scratch from the itch that scratched." > -- Keith Wiley > ________________________________________________________________________________ >
