Re: [Docutils-users] OT: DSV vs CSV

[Paul T. <pau...@gm...>]

On 10/17/11 6:05 PM, Alan G Isaac wrote:
>
> But an even better idea is to agree on a standard delimiter.
> (E.g., the comma.)
>
>

Actually, that is not such a good idea. From the Wiki entry on CSV:

" Microsoft Excel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel> will 
open .csv files, but depending on the system's regional settings, it may 
expect a semicolon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon> as a 
separator instead of a comma, since in some languages the comma is used 
as the decimal separator <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator>"

The actual delimiter is not important. I have actually written a XSLT 
stylesheet that parses CSV. The hard part is ot the delimiter. In fact, 
there really is no hard part.

But just to emphasize this point, people often send me results from 
races which I have to parse. They normally send them as space separated, 
since that is how they appear in tables, how they are used to seeing 
them. It would be extra work for them to require that they put commas 
in. When I get the files I use a CSV program to interpret the data.

Paul