parsing CSV files with quotes

[Chris Ryland]

There is no standard other than what works with the largest variety of
programs. It's sad that such a trivial issue is often thorny w.r.t.
interoperability. (Of course, Microsoft's applications are the worst
offenders in terms of randomness.)
--
Cheers!
/ Chris Ryland, President / Em Software, Inc. / www.emsoftware.com
"Al Christians" <achrist at easystreet.com> wrote in message
news:38E51E8B.4AD79567 at easystreet.com...
> Chris Ryland wrote:
> >
> >
> > Doubled quotes are *supposed* to work. Why not try putting some double
> > quotes in a cell and exporting with Excel to see how they're quoted?
>
> Yes, they do work in Excel, now that I go back and refresh my
> recollection by testing again.  But doubled quotes within a string
> don't work in Star Office, however.  (FWIW, Quattro doesn't do CSV's.)
>
> So what to you mean by "*supposed*"?? Is there any kind of ISO, BSI, or
> ANSI standard for CSV files?  I vaguely recall that the unix sort
> program falls under the posix standard, and that it is suppoed to sort
> records of delimited  fields.  Can anyone quote the law on this stuff?
>
> TIA
>
>
> Al