> From: bill lam
>
> text inside a spreadsheet cell can be multiline by forcing line break
> using alt-enter in window and linux. I found that block of cells
> containing line break can be copy-and-paste within spreadsheet. But
> csv verbs inside J base library seemed cannot handle that.
>
> eg, for cells
> -+-+-+
> |a|b|e|
> | |c| |
> | |d| |
> +-+-+-+
> |a|a|a|
> +-+-+-+
>
> clipboard of csv as reported by wd'clippaste' will be
> 97 9 98 10 99 10 100 9 101 10 97 9 97 9 97{a.
The issue here is that, given only the string above, there is no way any
routine can decide whether a LF represents the end of a record or a line break
embedded in a field.
Interestingly when I create the described spreadsheet structure in Excel 2007,
copy it to the clipboard and look at it using wd'clippaste' I get the following:
a. i. wd 'clippaste'
97 9 34 98 10 99 10 100 34 9 101 13 10 97 9 97 9 97 13 10
Disregarding the LF/CRLF difference because of Windows, the interesting thing
is that the cell containing the forced line breaks is enclosed with double
quotes (34{a.)
As a result the following work:
fixdsv wd 'clippaste'
+-+-----+--+
|a|b c d|e |
+-+-----+--+
|a|a |a |
+-+-----+--+
i.e. fixdsv with its default left argument (field delimiter = TAB and string
delimiter= ")
(TAB;'"') fixdsv wd 'clippaste'
+-+-----+--+
|a|b c d|e |
+-+-----+--+
|a|a |a |
+-+-----+--+
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