CleverCSV: A Drop-In Replacement for Python's CSV Module

Re:CleverCSV: A Drop-In Replacement for Python's CSV Module by manor on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @08:49AM (#22044666)

TSV --> Problem Solved! Has anyone ever stumbled upon a cell entry that needed to contain an actual tab character? No!!! The tab character's entire raison-d'etre is to separate fields, whereas the comma separates words. Technically the "C" in CSV denotes "Character" but with TSV the intent is 100% clear. The MIME type is explicit: "Note that fields that contain tabs are not allowable in this encoding." This is a vanishingly small price to pay for a parser a simple as split("\t")...

[1] http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/text/tab-separat...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:CleverCSV: A Drop-In Replacement for Python's CSV Module by dmd on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @09:00AM (#22044743)

What problem is solved, exactly? How do you parse the messy CSV file you've been handed, in order to convert it to TSV?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:CleverCSV: A Drop-In Replacement for Python's CSV Module by manor on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:03AM (#22046038)

My point is simply that TSVs are just as straightforward as CSVs but suffer none of the issues. So why are we not making TSVs to begin with?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:CleverCSV: A Drop-In Replacement for Python's CSV Module by dmd on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:06AM (#22046078)

Nobody (or very few people) processing CSVs is doing it because they like them. You do it because that's how someone else created the data - someone you don't have any control over, like a government agency, financial institution, piece of obscure software, whatever.

[ Parent | on HN ]