Comma delimited CSV files?

You can put quotes around the string fields.  Then ignore commas inside the quotes.  Of course you may have quotes in string values also.  Double quotes are usually safer because of names like O'Neal.

use a different delimiter.
Other than commas, TAB (chr9) is also an oft used delimiter.
this could still be called a .csv and fit in with the rules.

Depends on how you are processing the file.  If you are using a program on a csv with quotes around strings, you'll need to check for that in your code.  Some simplistic pseudo code for processing one line:

Read Line
While Not Done
   Look for a comma
   If Next Character is a quote
      Look for the next quote
   End If
   Look for the next comma
   If at End of Line
      Done is True
   End If
   Assign data value
End While

I agree with DawsonB. You ddidn't mention where the data is going, but you should use a delimiter that isn't in your data. So if you don't have tabs in any fields, you should use that. Most programs that will open the extract file should have no issues with tab delimited data. And for a bcp, you don't need to specify anything and the tab character will be used by default (if -c is specified in the bcp).

David

If you are using VB then an easier way to split each line out would be to use Split function

Read Line
While Not Done
   Read line from file into LineVariable
   Array = split(LineVariable,vbtab)
   
End While

this will mean you don't need to actually 'look' for the delimiters. You will just need to do with each field whatever you need to do with it.

I think you are right, its a pain trying to use commas. I may use TAB.
I am using a simple select statement to generate my csv file, How ( in sql) can I strip out all tabs in the cells (data itself) during the select, so that I can be guaranteed a tab free csv (except of course for where I want them as delimeters).
That should be it, thanks.
R

Select Field1,Field2,Replace(Field3,char(9),'<TAB>')  [Field3]
From Table

This way you could later programatticaly replace your tab, but all for all this would work just as well with a comma delimiter(although I tend to stick to TAB's).

This is all well and good, but why are you not using the DTS to do this? If you have a large table then DTS would be much more efficient.

You could use the same Select satatement on the source connection, and just point it at a text file and wham bam thank you mam!

I suggest using a the pipe character '|'.  This character is very rarely found in data.  I also agree with bhess1 that another good idea is, you should enclose the data in quotation marks.

Ok.....
I'm using | to delimit rows, and tab to delimit cols.
but guess what? there are tabs in my data. In my sql that I use to generate my csv, how can I replace any tabs that occur with a space.
This will close this Q.
Thanks in advance
R

Or change the column separator to another character such as '/0' that's a zero.

I'd recommend doing that before updating data.

David

I'm creating the csv from sqlserver, it doesn't allow me to specify anything but comma, tab, etc.
cheers!

You can use the -r and -t options of bcp to specify the column and row terminators when extracting the data from the table to a flat-file.

David

select REPLACE(ColumnName,char(9),' ') as ColumnName
returns.........
Argument data type text is invalid for argument 1 of replace function.
cheers

What are you going to do with the file - open it in Excel or a like package?

Just do something like the following in a DOS/NT command prompt:

bcp dbname.owner.table out flatfile.txt -Uuserid -Ppassword -Sservname -c -t'~' -r'|'

and that will create a file that you can load into anything where you can specify the row/column delimiters

Comment accepted as answer

Thanks, now see my new question