ansaurus

Question

Answer 1

+5 A:

Wikipdedia has the info you want

Fields with embedded commas must be enclosed within double-quote characters.

Yacoby 2010-02-20 12:06:39

Excel uses 'List separator' value from user locale settings. So in Russia that would be ';' instead of ','.

vava 2010-02-20 12:11:24

Answer 2

A:

This article is quite complete.

Fields that contain a special character (comma, newline, or double quote), must be enclosed in double quotes.

Desintegr 2010-02-20 12:07:16

Answer 3

A:

There is no real standard for what people tell csv files. Mirosoft refers to csv as *c*haracter *s*eparated *v*alues.

This is done because dependent on the decimal character the separated character is changed.

German:  1,2
English: 1.2

But I aggree that most times " of ' is used to enclose text elements. But either all strings are enclosed in " or none.

Totonga 2010-02-20 13:07:22

Answer 4

+2 A:

Jörg W Mittag 2010-02-20 13:12:17

@alex, specifically read #6 and #7.

Bart Kiers 2010-02-20 13:21:49

Answer 5

A:

CSV is very far from standardised. The nearest approach to it is this RFC, which explains how commas and other special characters should be handled.

anon 2010-02-20 13:21:06

How does Comma separated files work? ...if the text has commas in it..