You can use something like this. OVERDATE POSITION(138:145) CHAR "decode(:overdate,'current',sysdate,to_date(:overdate,'DDMMYYYY'))" -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of A Joshi Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 1:43 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: ** using decode in sql loader Hi, I would like to use decode in sqlloader to convert data. I have a date field that might have the text 'current' in which case I want to convert it into sysdate. Can that be done? Thanks for your help.=20 =09 --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term' -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l