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RE: st: RE: Re: convert data to CSV


From   "Earnhart, Benjamin J" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: RE: Re: convert data to CSV
Date   Sat, 16 Dec 2006 09:02:09 -0600

Per the Wikipedia entry, it seems like a reasonably well-specified
format to me. I still prefer tab-delimited (what I call .tsv) since if I
am in such a situation, I don't want to worry about commas or quotations
within an entry, but done properly, .csv is just fine.

Never did semi-colon delimited, except for a professor in computer
science who wrote his own code and had his own conventions.  And I go
back and forth from Excel a lot.  Sure, Excel will allow any delimiter
you specify.  But anything other than tabs and commas and you need to go
out of your way to tell it what is the delimiter.

So I dunno what Ben (the other Ben!) was referring to re: Excel
expecting semicolons.  Maybe parsing Excel XML?  But if it's XML, then
we're off in a world where anything can represent anything as long as
it's properly specified, and that's far beyond humble .csv files.
  
Ben Earnhart



-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Alan
Neustadtl
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 8:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: RE: Re: convert data to CSV

The wikipedia entry on this topic is informative
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values).  Apparently
there is no one agreed upon formal specification.

Best,
Alan


On 12/16/06, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> In this part of Europe, namely Britain, comma-separated means
> what it says. I haven't tested for change of behaviour on
> the other side of La Manche.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> Kit Baum
>
> > Well, Microsoft Office Help for "CSV file" says that data items are
> > separated by commas, so I don't know why Excel would expect that
> > (unless a default preference has been altered). Perhaps European
> > versions of MS Office behave differently because the comma is
> > used as
> > a digits separator. But RAY is on the same side of the pond as I am.
>
> > On Dec 16, 2006, at 2:33 AM, Ben wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > What Ray probably means is that Excel expects semicolons as
> > delimiters
> > > in a CSV file.
>
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