Skip Montanaro <skip.montan...@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.

----------
nosy:  -remi.lapeyre

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