Why does SQLite say it can't read SQL from a file?

Question

Hi all. I have a bunch of SQL in a file, which creates the tables and so forth. The problem is that the .read command simply returns "can't open xxx" when I try to execute it. I've set the permissions to everybody read/write, but that didn't help. I can cat the file from the command line and see it fine.

This is under Mac OS 10.6.3.

Anybody have any idea here? Thanks!

Answer 1

Here's the source code in shell.c, where the sqlite3 utility executes the .read and tries to read the .sql file:

  if( c=='r' && strncmp(azArg[0], "read", n)==0 && nArg==2 ){
    FILE *alt = fopen(azArg[1], "rb");
    if( alt==0 ){
      fprintf(stderr,"can't open \"%s\"\n", azArg[1]);
    }else{
      process_input(p, alt);
      fclose(alt);
    }
  }else

You can see that the utility will print "can't open xxx" only when the call to fopen fails. Pity they don't print errno for you, but this info should really help you narrow down the problem as not specific to sqlite.

You're either specifying the path wrong (try quoting it), you don't have permission, or the file really doesn't exist (meaning that there's something different in how you're using cat and .read, like the current directory is different).