Some implementations of the CSV format do not consistenly use comma-separated values. Microsoft products and others use a comma only for numeric values, with all others designated as text by enclosing them in quotes, effectively using a quote-comma-quote delimiter.
To make parsing such files even more of a challenge, a quoted string can contain any character, including commas and returns. I've tried a number of algorithms for parsing these files efficiently, and even explored the issue wih Ken Ray and others, and the only robust algorithm we've come up with yet is one which walks through each of the characters to determine what is a delimiter and wha is part of the data. I'd like to find a faster method, but thus far all attempts at using the replace command and replacetext function have fallen short in one way or another. Considering the ubiquity of this format, I would imagine I'm not the first MetaTalker needed to parse CSV. Anyone found an algorithm faster that walking through the chars? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Custom Software and Web Development for All Major Platforms Developer of WebMerge 2.0: Publish any Database on Any Site ___________________________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
