On 4 Feb 2020, at 12:18pm, Robert M. Münch <robert.mue...@saphirion.com> wrote:

> - sep=';': field separator character (different from default ',')

If you provide this facility, please don't add it to anything called 'csv' 
since the 'c' stands for 'comma'.

For those playing along at home, csv files using semi-colon are a result of a 
bug in Excel.  Windows has a setting for a 'list separator'.  The two most 
usual values are ',' and ';'.  The CSV export filter in Excel takes its 
separator from this field rather than always using a comma, because it was 
written by someone who wasn't aware of, didn't understand, or was intentionally 
trying to disrupt the standard.  Decades after being told about the bug, 
Microsoft hasn't fixed it.

There are a couple of other errors in Excel's CSV filters including how strings 
are quoted and how a blank value differs from a zero-length string.  The best 
way I've seen to handle this was to add a new filter to your software, similar 
to 'csv', called something like 'exceltext' which did things the Excel way.
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