Thanks to everybody who replied on this issue and especially to Bill
Cook who got this mess loaded accurately into an RBase database. I
originally thought the CSV file I was working with had loaded into Excel and
Access "with no problems". I take that back. There were plenty of
problems. Excel and Access simply didn't report the problems and RBase did.
The main problem was that the application producing the file doesn't
follow what I think are the accepted CSV output rules. Thanks to Ken Burton
for looking into that one. This is what he said:
'No CSV standard in SQL 89, 98 or even SQL3. CSV is an MS creation? In
fact there are multiple CSV formats depending on the application. The
one most often used though is the Excel reference:
'"The CSV (Comma delimited) file format saves only the text and values as
they are displayed in cells of the active worksheet. All rows and all
characters in each cell are saved. Columns of data are separated by
commas, and each row of data ends in a carriage return. If a cell
contains a comma, the cell contents are enclosed in double quotation
marks."'
It looks like the rules RBase follows for producing a CSV file are:
Separate column/cell values with commas.
and
If the column/cell value contains only a comma then surround the column/cell
value with quotes.
If the column/cell value contains quote marks then don't do anything.
If the column/cell value contains both comma(s) and quote marks then
surround the column/cell with quotes and place doubled quote marks in place
of each of the original quote marks.
Bernie
