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.
You just choose a placeholder that does not appear in the data. You could even implement it in a way that a placeholder is automatically selected upfront that does not appear in the data.
When it comes to parsing, the thing is that you usually have to make some assumptions about the document structure.
What if there is #COMMA, in one of the fields (but no #COMMA#)?
Yes, the assumption you have to make is called the grammar, and you better have a parser that always does what the grammar says, and global text replacement is a technique that is easy to get wrong, difficult to prove correct, and completely unnecessary at that.
