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I literally don't get why JSON is bad: [{row1}, {row2}, {row3}] The fact that it can do more is in no way a negative. Can even make a limited JSON parser with reduced capabilities. And with JSON can do more definitions like header names vs column names vs just arrays of arrays.
>> XML and Javascript are tree structures and not suitable for efficiently storing tabular data (plus other issues).
I don't think anyone wants tabular data. They want to ingest it into a system so they can query it, or join it, or aggregate it. They want to get rid of tabular data as quickly as possible Data at the boundary must be validated, a file format can't do that for your. Semantics is harder than syntax and you can't push every problem to that level.
while csv is less than optimal, it's always worked out in practice for me (because we still have to validate anything of significant size and nothing finance or city/nation sized should generally be edited by hand anyway, and errors are everywhere independent of format).
honestly, my bigger nightmare has been people trying to put things into something like xml...
edit: not that there aren't huge problems with the csv/excel/database software and interaction: generally I just end up having to assume everything is text and defining type information my end afterwards on successful parsing
I literally don't get why JSON is bad: [{row1}, {row2}, {row3}] The fact that it can do more is in no way a negative. Can even make a limited JSON parser with reduced capabilities. And with JSON can do more definitions like header names vs column names vs just arrays of arrays.
I don't think anyone wants tabular data. They want to ingest it into a system so they can query it, or join it, or aggregate it. They want to get rid of tabular data as quickly as possible Data at the boundary must be validated, a file format can't do that for your. Semantics is harder than syntax and you can't push every problem to that level.
Spreadsheets haven't exactly gone away either.
I literally don't get why JSON is bad: [{row1}, {row2}, {row3}] The fact that it can do more is in no way a negative. Can even make a limited JSON parser with reduced capabilities. And with JSON can do more definitions like header names vs column names vs just arrays of arrays.
Does Excel support it? No? Then that's the end of that.
Excel is tabular data to all non developers. The formats supported by Excel are the whole thing.
And if we're inventing a CSV-like format that uses a more convenient character than quotes and commas, maybe jumping to a non-displayable non-typeable character isn't the best?
Honestly, if I were inventing a table format, I'd use a strict subset of HTML5 tables. Strip it down as hard as possible to the bare minimal elements - no unneeded close tags. The only real flaw is that their encoding of whitespace and escaped chars are verbose and ugly.
Example workbook
Persons
NameAddress
Alice123 Fake St, Faketon FA 12345
Bob789 Any Pl, Anytown AY 54321
Cars
MakeModel
BuickLeSabre
PontiacVibe
> Columns are separated by \u001F (ASCII unit separator) > Rows are separated by \u001E (ASCII record separator) Or, how about columns separated by \u002C, and rows separated by \u000A. And, for bonus points, we can even define unambiguous ways of escaping those two characters so that they CAN appear within column values, if we wanted to, and not tell people that our encoding format is totally stupid and that they ne…
This is a really unfair appraisal in a bunch of different ways.
Removing the ability to embed record delimiters, for example, means you can process the records in parallel. That’s a massive improvement all by itself.
Stating that their reasons are “imaginary” is just a needless insult, apart from being wrong. Why be like that?
I don't think anyone wants tabular data. They want to ingest it into a system so they can query it, or join it, or aggregate it. They want to get rid of tabular data as quickly as possible Data at the boundary must be validated, a file format can't do that for your. Semantics is harder than syntax and you can't push every problem to that level.
> No escaping. If you want to put \u001F or \u001E in your data – tough you > can’t. Use a different format. > It would be reasonably compact, efficient to parse and easy to manually edit > (Notepad++ shows the unit separator as a ‘US’ symbol). Is it me or it won't be human readable because of the lack of new lines?
> Why can’t we have a format where Does Excel support it? No? Then that's the end of that. Excel is tabular data to all non developers. The formats supported by Excel are the whole thing. And if we're inventing a CSV-like format that uses a more convenient character than quotes and commas, maybe jumping to a non-displayable non-typeable character isn't the best? Honestly, if I were inventing a table format, I'd use a…