Media Type "text/csv": new draft (-02) and Last Call
Yakov Shafranovich
YakovS at solidmatrix.com
Wed Mar 23 15:35:54 CET 2005
Graham Klyne wrote:
>
> I feel compelled to ask the question: should this really be a text/csv
> type rather than application/csv? Past comments by Ned Freed with
> respect to text/html suggest possibly not, but similarity with
> text/tab-separated-values suggests maybe yes. I don't personally feel
> strongly about this.
>
Can you point to Ned's message?
> Section 2:
>
> [[
> 6. Field containing line breaks (CRLF) and commas should be enclosed
> in double-quotes. For example:
>
> "aaa","b CRLF
> bb","ccc" CRLF
> zzz,yyy,xxx
> ]]
>
> Are there any CSV applications that actually quote newlines in values?
> (I'm not sure that my own CSV handling code would accept a newline
> within a quoted string)
>
Some of the code I have been working with is happens to do so. I think
it depends on which application you are using. For example I just tried
it with OpenOffice Calc v1.1.3 and it accepts newlines within fields.
> [[
> 7. If double-quotes are used to enclosed fields, then double-quotes
> inside fields must be surrounded by double quotes. For example:
>
> "aaa","b"""bb","ccc"
> ]]
>
> This is NOT how Excel handles quotes, nor my own code. Rather, when a
> quoted string contains a double-quote character, the double quote is
> doubled up. Thus the example would be:
> "aaa","b""bb","ccc"
>
I just double checked with the applications that I am using and they
tend to work the way you describe. I will adjust the draft.
> Section 7.1:
> [[
> [3] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7, RFC 793,
> September 1981.
> ]]
>
> I think this should be an informative reference, not normative.
>
Thanks for catching that.
Yakov
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