[Info-vax] PERL for OpenVMS Alpha that will install on V8.4

[Paul Sture]

VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:

> In article <14guma-e93.ln1 at news.chingola.ch>, Paul Sture <nospam at sture.ch> writes:
>>Paul Sture wrote:
>>
>>> VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Quote all?  I'll assume that means that all of the CSVs are quoted?
>>>>
>>>> What about monetary values?  This particular customer is taking in
>>>> data from international customers with different currency cirteria.
>>>
>>> I don't understand your question.  To me, QUOTE_ALL means that numeric
>>> fields can contain commas without causing havoc when the subsequent CSV 
>>> reader processes the file.
>>
>>Hmm, I've just had a poke around in a couple of CSV files and see single
>>quotes in there too, that being the thousands separator in Switzerland.
>>
>>And I've just remembered why I stopped using Apple's Numbers spreadsheet
>>where CSV files are concerned.  I've got a CSV file here which only
>>quotes the character strings which contain a comma. E.g. 
>>
>>2013-01-28,"some text, containing a comma",two words,1'123.45
>
> Which is how the client needs to see the data.

I didn't explain well enough then.  The problem I have run into with
the way Numbers (Apple's iWork spreadsheet program) generates CSV files
is the fact that it mixes quoted and non-quoted text fields within the
same record.

Thus programs which sniff just the first record of a CSV input file may
come to the wrong conclusion about whether text fields are quoted or
not (and in a case like the example above might still go awry).

Back in 2008 this caused me some grief with the various bits of software
putting the quotes into the data itself.

-- 
Paul Sture