Re: TSV and CSV

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Georg Bauhaus" <bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote in message
news:42c5e46e$0$10818$9b4e6d93@newsread4.arcor-online.net...
> Martin Dowie wrote:
>
> > If you want commas in the data fields, simply wrap the data fields in
> > quotes, e.g.
> >
> > "1","alpha, beta, gamma","foo"
>
> You can't be seriously sugggesting this?

Of course he's seriously suggesting this, it's how these files work.

> "If you want quotes in the fields..."

You escape them, I forget how. (There is a standard for CSV files.) Same as
you would do in Ada or any other language.There's no place that you can put
quotes without some sort of escape (I usually use the Ada syntax if I'm
inventing my own) if you plan to read them afterwards.

But in any case, if your data is at all complex, you are going to need
complex reading/writing to handle it. The original query was about tables of
numbers, not random sequences of characters. Pretty much any format can be
made to work for that.

                   Randy.