Media Type "text/csv": new draft (-02) and Last Call

[Graham Klyne]

At 01:14 23/03/05 -0500, Yakov Shafranovich wrote:

>Clyde,
>
>Thanks for pointing this out. I personally think that instead of making 
>the header record mandatory which is something that most CSV applications 
>do not have, I would rather take the comma out of the end of the record 
>and have the last field end with a CRLF instead of an optional COMMA. Do 
>you think that is a plausible solution?

No.  Some of the Excel data I process has trailing commas.  This must be 
allowed.

I also don't think it's necessary to say anything (other than maybe as a 
comment) about any special status for the first line:  such use is 
accommodated quite reasonably within the basic CSV format.

For example, having such a line when exporting Excel as CSV depends 
entirely upon how the user constructs the original spreadsheet.  Column 
headings are common, but not mandatory.  In some cases, there may be a more 
complex heading structure -- this is an application issue, not a dataset 
format issue, and as such does not belong in the dataset format specification.

#g
--


>Yakov
>
>clyde.ingram at edl.uk.eds.com wrote:
>>In section "2.Definition of the CSV format", items 3 & 4 state:
>>3. There maybe an optional header line appearing as the first line of the 
>>file with the same format as normal record lines. This header will 
>>contain names corresponding to the fields in the file and will usually 
>>contain the same number of fields as the records in the rest of the file. 
>>For example:
>>field_name,field_name,field_name CRLF
>>aaa,bbb,ccc CRLF
>>zzz,yyy,xxx CRLF
>>4. Within the header and each record there may be one or more fields, 
>>delimited by commas. The last field in the record may or may not be 
>>followed by a comma. For example:
>>aaa,bbb,ccc
>>Why would you permit the last field in the record to be followed by a comma?
>>If a CSV record comprises:
>>aaa,,ccc,ddd,,CRLF
>>does it have 6 fields or 5?
>>If comma is a field separator only, there are 6 fields:
>>1. aaa
>>2. <null>
>>3. ccc
>>4. ddd
>>5. <null>
>>6. <null>
>>But if the comma is also a mandatory terminator for the last field 
>>(effectively the record separator becomes comma-CRLF), then there are 5 fields.
>>In my view, permitting the last field to end with comma leads to 
>>ambiguity, and prevents an application from checking that an exact number 
>>of fields is present.  The only way to guarantee the exact number of 
>>fields is then to count the fields in the header.  But then your item 3 
>>allows the header record to be omitted.
>>Would it not be safer to make the header record mandatory?
>>Thank-you and regards,
>>Clyde Ingram

------------
Graham Klyne
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