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0 pointssunir12y ago0 comments

Think it through. What if there is free text in the field? "How are you, Sally?"

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4 comments · 2 top-level

lignuist12y ago· 2 in thread

You can replace all commas with a placeholder (e.g. "#COMMA#"), replace the delimiter with a comma, parse the document and then replace all placeholders in the data with ",".

Someone12y ago

That does not work, unless that first replacement magically ignores the commas that are part of field separators. If you know how to write the code that does that, your problem is solved.

lignuist12y ago

I was referencing to "What if the character separating fields is not a comma?".

And there it clearly works. I used this technique a few times with success. If you find a CSV file that has mixed field separator types, then you probably found a broken CSV file.

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chrismcb12y ago

If your delimiter appears in a field, the field needs to be quoted.

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