Thanks tomas, that's what I've done. I still wanted to automate the creation of these control files though, so this is what I did. Wrote a generic control file called control.ctl:

LOAD DATA
INFILE <table>.txt
INTO TABLE <table>
(
  person_id        POSITION(1:9)        CHAR(9)
  surname        POSITION(10:34)        CHAR(25)
  given_names        POSITION(35-59)        CHAR(25)
)
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Then wrote the following script to write a control file for each data file in the directory:

#!/usr/bin/perl

#configuration variables
$lpath="/u04/tmp/log";
$cpath="/u04/tmp/ctl/";
$cfile="control.ctl";
$dirname="/u04/tmp/txt/";

# load the control file data

open(SOURCE, "< $cpath$cfile")
or die "Couldn't open $cpath for reading: $!\n";

@control = <SOURCE>;

foreach $line (@control) {
    $ctl .= $line;
}

#process all files in the directory
opendir(DIR, $dirname) or die "can't opendir $dirname: $!";
while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {

  if ($file =~ /.txt/) {
    ($table = $file) =~ s/.txt//;
    #print "$file  ->  $table \n";
    
    #write the control file
    open(COUT, "> $cpath$table.ctl")
    or die "Couldn't open $cpath$file.ctl for writing: $!";
    ($tmp = $ctl) =~ s/<table>/$table/g;
    print COUT $tmp;
    close COUT;

    #call SQL*Loader
    $cmd = "sqlldr USERID=user/id\@service ".
              "control=$cpath$table.ctl " .
          "log=$lpath$table.log " .
              "bad=$lpath$table.bad direct=true";
    $status = system($cmd);
  }
}
closedir(DIR);
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I'm sure this code could be cleaned up a bit, but it does the job.

*~-}hotyopa{-~*