A straightforward way to extend CSV with metadata

Re:A straightforward way to extend CSV with metadata by Tagbert on Thursday August 19, 2021 @12:27PM (#28235859)

Excel has some major problems with CSV ingestion though I don’t think that this proposal will address those problems.

Here are a couple of cases that I run into frequently:

* Excel is very aggressive about forcing type conversion based on its own assumptions. It will convert strings to dates or numbers, even if data is lost in the process. It will ignore quotes to convert long numeric IDs into scientific notation which truncates the ID unrecoverable.

* Excel cannot deal with quoted strings containing line breaks. It treats them as separate records and you get truncated records and partial records on separate rows.

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Re:A straightforward way to extend CSV with metadata by mark-r on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:05PM (#28242042)

My two favorite problems with Excel automatic type conversions:

Zip codes that lose leading zeros.

Gene names that get converted to dates. The names of some genes were recently changed because too many databases were being corrupted by researchers using Excel to read CSV files: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...

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