Re:A love letter to the CSV format
by FridgeSeal on Wednesday March 26, 2025 @07:47PM
(#43488855)
I guess the point is that I can take a generic json parser and point it at just about any JSON I get my hands on, and have close to no issues parsing it.
Want to do the same with csv? Good luck. Delimiter? Configurable. Encoding? Configurable. Misplaced comma? No parse in JSON, in csv: might still parse, but is now semantically incorrect and you possibly won’t know until it’s too late, depending on your parser. The list goes on.
Here is a quick test
The table of contents points to a single Json object that is 20ish gb compressed
https://www.anthem.com/machine-readable-file/search/
All stock libs will fail
Apple macOS has had to invest enormous amounts...
Pick your distro of Linux has had to invest enormous amounts...
None of them a perfect and any number of valid complaints can be said about any of them. None of the complaints make any of the things useless. Everyone has workarounds.
Hell, JSON has had to invest enormous amounts of effort...