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

[Yakov Shafranovich]

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?

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
>