If you do not specify native (-n) or character (-c) format, bcp prompts you interactively for:
The file storage type
The prefix length
The terminator for each column of data to be copied
A field length for fields that are to be stored as char or binary
The default values for these prompts produce the same results as using the native format and provide a simple means for copying data out of a database for later reloading into Adaptive Server.
If you are copying data to or from Adaptive Server for use with other programs, base your answers to the prompts on the format required by the other software.
These four prompts provide an extremely flexible system that allows you either to read a file from other software or to create a file that requires little or no editing to conform to many other data formats.
The following sections discuss these prompts and the way they interact to affect the data.
