[issue27580] CSV Null Byte Error

[Skip Montanaro]

Skip Montanaro <skip.montanaro at gmail.com> added the comment:

I'm sorry, but why is this issue coming up again after nearly four years? Especially without a patch? (I apologize. I've gotten a bit more grumpy as I've aged.) Let me summarize a bit of history.

Back in the early 2000s, Dave Cole at Object Craft in Australia implemented a C-based CSV module for Python. I don't know exactly what version was his initial target, but I have a vague memory that it was Python 1.5-ish. A few years later that was cleaned up and adapted for inclusion into the Python standard library, being added to Python 2.3. I helped with some of the Python stuff and steered it into the core. Much later (Python 3.x - with the great Unicode unification), it acquired Unicode support. At the time of creation, the only "standard" for CSV files was what Excel could read and write. One of the initial requirements as I recall was that CSV files generated by the module had to be able to survive a round trip to Excel and back. As I indicated in at least one of my previous messages to this thread, knowing how Excel handles CSV files with NUL bytes would be (at least) interesting. I still think so. Can anyone test that?

I'm not trying to suggest that gracefully handling NUL bytes wouldn't be useful in certain contexts (I also use find with -print0 routinely to preserve filenames with spaces), and if the CSV module was being written from scratch today, perhaps NUL support would be included. I am happy with the current CSV module as it exists today. I still use it routinely. Adding NUL support wouldn't scratch any itch I have. If you want NUL byte support, either as a delimiter or as a character in a cell, I think you're going to have to submit a patch. Otherwise I suggest this be closed rather than languishing for another four years.

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nosy:  -remi.lapeyre

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<https://bugs.python.org/issue27580>
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