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  • What do you mean by escaping the data? Why not just use the pipe by itself as a delimiter as that would separate the text into each column just as a space, tab, or comma would? You are complicating things where it isn't necessary by using double quotes when you already have the pipe as a delimiter. If it's just text within a file then you don't need to escape it unless you are using a command such as sed to alter the file and need to work with the text on the command line. If that's the case, you can just escape it with backslashes or single quotes. Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 2:48
  • The pipe can be found within data as well ie “2433” | “Concatenate the fields with | in your summary” | “5’6” tall” Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 3:43
  • Hence we have to use column and text delimiters. I apolologize if my statement was t clear when I said escaping the data... I meant to say escaping the data which includes “ within the data. Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 3:45
  • We’re after a way to escape the text delimiter which in our this case is “ (our only choice for text delimiter) that is found in the data ie 5’6” Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 3:47
  • The pipe is already a delimiter for both of them. By its very definition, it separates all of the text into different columns. I can understand why you need double quotes to specify height, width, and length but it really isn't necessary for the rest. Even when using double quotes to specify height, width, and length, the pipe acts as a delimiter for each field no matter what value or characters are contained inside which makes the other double quotes unnecessary and redundant. It's only a suggestion on my part as it would make your database a lot easier to manage. Commented Apr 4, 2018 at 11:52