title: Date format for SQL*Loader
body: <p>I am trying to import a file of records into a table and am getting </p>
  
  <pre><code>Rejected - Error on table FUNDPRICE_TEST, column FUNDDATE.
  ORA-01843: not a valid month
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I did some research and read that Oracle by default expects dates formatted yyyymmdd. Clearly this would throw an error when the first day value (the first record in my case) is more than 12.<br></p>
  
  <p>How can I format the date in my exported csv file from <code>mm/dd/yyyy 00:00:00</code> to this <code>yyyymmdd</code> format?</p>
  
  <p>This is of course assuming this is my issue. I could be barking up the wrong tree.</p>
  
  <p>Here is the ctl file after trying date formatting:</p>
  
  <pre><code>load data
  infile 'commands/FundPriceDataNEW2.txt'
   into table FundPrice
   fields terminated by "," optionally enclosed by '"'          
   ( FUND, FUNDDATE DATE "mm/dd/yyyy HH24:MI:SS", FAV, FUNDVALUE )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here are a few records from the FundPriceDataNEW2.txt:</p>
  
  <pre><code>16,9/30/1999 0:00:00,"999999",9.64
  16,10/31/1999 0:00:00,"999999",10.06
  16,11/30/1999 0:00:00,"999999",10.40
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the order is fund,funddate,fav,fundvalue. The error is on the date saying the format is invalid.</p>