Working With CSV Files
As a programmer I work with a number of different file types. Each one has it’s own rules and structure. Whether I am writing a desktop application or just a script that makes my life easier, I love working with csv files.
Using CSV, or comma separated values, files makes it easy to program an application to interact with Microsoft Excel and many other ‘mainstream’ applications.
A few years back I wrote an application for a trucking company my wife was working for. They needed to grab a monstrous file from a government website and parse the data to be used by their CSR’s first thing every morning.
I tried numerous different ways to work with the data, but the easiest, and most efficient way, was to feed the parsed data into csv files. Using csv files allowed me transport huge amounts of data between the two websites and the CSR’s were free to use the same csv files in the application of their choice.
While working with CSV files, I tend to get my single and double quotes mixed up from time to time. I think it may have something to do with me being set in my ways as a Delphi programmer, and I forget that when using fields that contain quotes I have to escape the double quote.
Either way, I love working with csv files, as I have yet to find a different format that works so easily with so many different applications.