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That would be solved by using the ASCII control chars Record Separator / Unit Separator! I don't get how this is not widely used as standard.
The _entire_ point of a CSV file is that it's fully human readable and write-able. The characters you mention could be used in a custom delimiter variant of the format, but at that point it's back to a binary machine format.
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Excel won't import ISO 8601 timestamps either, which is crazy these days where it's the universal standard, and there's no excuse to use anything else. You have to replace the "T" separator with a space and also any trailing "Z" UTC suffix (and I think any other timezone/offset as well?) for Excel to be able to parse as a time/date.
Honestly I’m happier when Excel doesn’t try to convert anything. too much bugginess.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...
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The _entire_ point of a CSV file is that it's fully human readable and write-able. The characters you mention could be used in a custom delimiter variant of the format, but at that point it's back to a binary machine format.
What do you mean? I just push the Record Separator key on my keyboard. /s in case :)
But when looking for a picture to back up my (likely flawed) memory, Google helpfully told me that you can get a record separator character by hitting Ctrl-^ (caret). Who knew?
CSV is ever so elegant but it has one fatal flaw - quoting has "non-local" effects, i.e. an extra or missing quote at byte 1 can change the meaning of a comma at byte 1000000. This has (at least) two annoying consequences: 1. It's tricky to parallelise processing of CSV. 2. A small amount of data corruption can have a big impact on the readability of a file (one missing or extra quote can bugger the whole thing up).…
"the controversial ex-post RFC 4180" I looked at the RFC. What is controversial about it?
You mean aside from the fact it's ex-post ...
I much prefer that to any sort of "common institutional memory" that is nevertheless only talked about on random forums. People die, other people enter the field... hello subtle incompatibilities.
This is a double-edged sword. The "you might even event it yourself" simplicity means that in practice lots of different people do end up just inventing their own version rather than standardizing to RFC-4180 or whatever when it comes to "quote values containing commas", values containing quotes, values containing newlines, etc. And the simplicity means these type of non-standard implementations can go completely undetectable until a problematic value happens to be used. Sometimes added complexity that forces paying more attention to standards and quickly surfaces a diversion from those standards is helpful.
1. https://github.com/manifold-systems/manifold/tree/master/man...
I greatly prefer TSV over CSV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab-separated_values
Code editors may convert tabs to spaces but are you really editing and saving TSV data files in your code editor?
"the controversial ex-post RFC 4180" I looked at the RFC. What is controversial about it?