BL_DELIMITER= LIBNAME Statement Option

Specifies override of the default delimiter character for separating columns of data during bulk loading or unloading (retrieval).

Valid in: SAS/ACCESS LIBNAME statement
Categories: Bulk Loading
Data Set Control
Default: the bell character (ASCII 0x07) [Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft SQL Server, Spark in HDFS]
comma (,) [Spark in Databricks]
Requirement: To specify this option, you must first set the BULKUNLOAD= data set option or LIBNAME option to YES.
Data source: Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Microsoft SQL Server, Spark
Notes: Support for Microsoft SQL Server was added in SAS 9.4M7.
Support for Spark was added in SAS 9.4M9.
See: BULKLOAD= data set option, BULKUNLOAD= LIBNAME option, BULKUNLOAD= data set option

Table of Contents

Syntax

BL_DELIMITER='<any-single-character>'

Details

Here is when you might want to use this option:

  • to override the default delimiter character that the interface uses to separate columns of data that are transferred to or retrieved from the DBMS during bulk loading or retrieval.
  • if your character data contains the default delimiter character, to avoid any problems while parsing the data stream.

Amazon Redshift: Only Amazon Redshift supports bulk retrieval of data into SAS.

Spark: This option is used when the Spark engine bulk loads or bulk unloads data in Databricks. This option is also used when the Spark engine bulk loads data in HDFS. When bulk unloading data from Databricks, a comma is the only supported delimiter. This option cannot be used to change the delimiter for bulk unloading. For more information, see Bulk Loading and Bulk Unloading with the Spark Engine.

Last updated: February 3, 2026