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In my experience, CSV is very fuzzy. Do you include headers? What character is used for separator? Comma? Semi colon? Tab? Are fields enclosed in quotes? How are quotes within quotes escaped? What encoding do you use for non-ascii symbols? &c &c .. Without are sample reference, these are all very common variables.


What character is used for separator? Comma? Semi colon? Tab?

It isn't Comma-Separated-Values if fields are not separated by commas, but the others are valid points. Failure to handle quoting correctly is the most common form of broken CSV support I've seen. Encoding is usually specified out-of-band.


Technically no, but if you are in mainland Europe, Excel will happily save your CSV files using a semi colon. And, yes - that _is_ maddening.




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