Timeline for Why is a comma a bad record separator/delimiter in CSV files?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 27, 2017 at 7:58 | vote | accept | David Gasquez | ||
| May 22, 2017 at 6:21 | history | edited | amoeba | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 25, 2015 at 7:16 | comment | added | Gere | After reading that question on the internet in a list of question, I couldn't take that question list (from SAS) seriously anymore. If you are a real data scientist, you would use something that has enough quoting capabilities to never fail on any delimiter. I believe even Excel does a better job there. | |
| Nov 25, 2015 at 0:18 | comment | added | user2338816 | Separating values is very different from separating/delimiting records. Too many comments and answers seem to ignore that. The question title asks about "record". If commas separate values, it should be obvious why they shouldn't separate records. | |
| Nov 24, 2015 at 15:17 | answer | added | Ronald Straight | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 24, 2015 at 11:15 | answer | added | Stig Hemmer | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 24, 2015 at 6:59 | comment | added | spickermann | in some countries the decimal separator is a comma? Looking at this wikipedia map I guess most countries use the comma as separator... | |
| Nov 23, 2015 at 16:18 | comment | added | Hagen von Eitzen | Of course if you expand the abbreviation CSV, you must use commas to separate your values ... | |
| Nov 23, 2015 at 12:05 | comment | added | Nick Cox | (a) I've often imported .csv files successfully. (b) I advise people not to use .csv if they have commas within their data. These don't contradict each other. It's unfortunate that (b) needs explanation in some quarters. | |
| Nov 23, 2015 at 11:49 | comment | added | Scortchi♦ | There's a desperation in the search for ever-more-obscure delimiters - pipes, pilcrows, thorns - that suggests agreeing on & following a standard is really the only safe way for people to exchange data in delimited text files. And a universal standard has to allow any text string to be represented (as does RFC4180), rather than relying on the assumption that some won't need to be & can be put to other work. | |
| Nov 23, 2015 at 2:02 | comment | added | Adrian Torrie | @whuber I see your cynicism and raise it: perhaps users of SAS have problems dealing with csv files. | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 22:01 | comment | added | Jeremy Miles | @whuber - SAS (in my experience) can struggle with CSV files, whether they have commas or not, requiring huge amounts of hand coding for every weird thing that SAS doesn't like. | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 21:26 | answer | added | Gorilla | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 16:48 | comment | added | whuber♦ | A cynic, upon noting that this article is a SAS puff piece, might suggest that perhaps SAS has problems processing CSV files with commas :-). | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 16:21 | answer | added | djhurio | timeline score: 17 | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 16:16 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackStats/status/668463003529035776 | ||
| Nov 22, 2015 at 15:41 | answer | added | Whirl Mind | timeline score: 11 | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 12:42 | answer | added | Christian Sauer | timeline score: 9 | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 11:39 | answer | added | Tim | timeline score: 33 | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 11:34 | comment | added | user78229 | Nearly any delimiter is better than a comma. The reason is that, when comma-delimited files are being read in to some data parsing tools, commas can be confused with punctuation, disrupting the "layout" of the fields or columns. | |
| Nov 22, 2015 at 11:24 | history | asked | David Gasquez | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
