Garrett Hylltun wrote:
Alex Tweedly wrote:
My summary : If possible and practical, use TSV instead (tab separated
values).
If it needs to be CVS, then find this thread in the archives. There's
code in there to handle the more common cases, and there was some
discussion on just how weird and varied the different versions of "csv"
can be. If you want to skip the discussion and go straight to the code -
see Richard Gaskin's posting in that thread on July 1st 2004
Greetings Alex,
Thanks for all the info. Yes, I'd prefer to simply use TAB delimited
files since it's much easier to deal with in Rev, but I will still need
to implement the ability to open and save COMMA delimited files too.
And it sounds like everything I need is in those threads, so thanks a
bunch :-)
If you absolutely must support CSV, please consider joining a handful of
us curmudgeons on a mission to save the world from the unnecessary
horror that is CSV: support for reads, but not for writes.
The last thing the world needs is yet another app keeping that
half-baked format alive. :)
It was a crappy idea when it was created (how did it even survive more
than two minutes in the first meeting where it was proposed?), and it
just gets more self-evidently crappy every year that passes with more
and more variant implementations polluting the datasphere.
I have an app that reads CSV but will export only in tab-delimited
format -- and it will use the most sensible form I've seen yet:
FileMaker Pro's, in which in-data returns are gracefully accommodated as
ASCII 11, and any quotes in the file are only part of the data, never a
delimiter.
Not long ago I had an opportunity to help contribute to a specification
for a format for affiliate data feeds, and at its heart it's the FMP tab
format.
So we have several million FMP users, plus a few thousand affiliate
marketers, and now your customers too. :)
Just as polio was once an epidemic so broad it was considered absurd to
try to wipe it out, bit by bit we'll move forward toward a more sensible
world where good people need no longer suffer from effects of CSV.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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