EDIT: FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\u0059' WORKS I am trying to create an external table from a csv file with ; as delimiter. I have tried FIELDS TERMINATED BY ';' FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\;' FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\\;' Modifying the data is not an option. This is the hive script: CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE table1( f STRING ) COMMENT 'table 1' ROW FORMAT DELIMITED FIELDS TERMINATED BY '\;' STORED AS TEXTFILE LOCATION '/path/to/hdfs/' tblproperties ("skip.header.line.count"="1"); I get the following error, in all cases: Error while compiling statement: FAILED: ParseException line 72:23 mismatched input '<EOF>' expecting StringLiteral near 'BY' in table row format's field separator [ERROR_STATUS] ... View more