News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates (2020). Parent comment

Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by imtringued on Monday April 11, 2022 @06:51AM (#30986970)
>then use the 'From Text/CSV' wizard to specify the data types for each column in your data source, neatly bypassing this entire issue.

Something people do not understand is that type information in CSV files is conveyed out of band. The application that is reading the CSV file must know the datatype which effectively turns each CSV file into an application specific format.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Human genes renamed to stop Microsoft Excel from misreadi... by hobofan on Monday April 11, 2022 @07:20AM (#30987172)
> which effectively turns each CSV file into an application specific format

Thanks for writing that! I don't think I've seen the reason for my (partial) dislike of CSV put into words that clearly before.

[ Parent | on HN ]