CSV application support
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The comma-separated values file format is a very simple data file format that is supported by almost all spreadsheet software such as Excel (although Excel uses the list separator of the current locale settings, which is a semicolon instead of a comma for many locales), OpenOffice.org Calc and Gnumeric as well as many online spreadsheet services such as EditGrid and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Many database management systems support the reading and writing of CSV files.
[edit] Programming language tools
Any programming language that has input/output and string processing functionality is capable of reading and writing CSV files. The following is a list of individual programming language support for the comma-separated values format.
| Language | Tool | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BASIC | none required | supported internally |
| C/C++ | Free Tools:
CSV module, Libraries: |
No comments in code. separated documentation. Well documented, includes a CSV BNF grammar. |
| Cocoa/Objective-C | cCSVparse by Michael Stapelberg | BSD-licensed CSV parsing class |
| Haskell | http://www.xoltar.org/languages/haskell/CSV.hs http://peteg.org/blog/AYAD/Project/2008-04-11-LazyCSVParser.autumn |
Not sure if RFC compliant. |
| Java | Several free CSV tools exist:
QN CSV CSVReader/Writer CSVFile [1] OpenCSV [2] [3] and commercial tools: Ricebridge Java CSV Component. There are also JDBC drivers available: [4] [5] [6] [7] and an ODBC driver: [8] |
|
| LaTeX | csvtools | from CTAN |
| Lisp | fare-csv, csv-parser | fare-csv is an ASDF package, csv-parser is a .lisp file |
| Mathematica | Import/Export | Built in support. |
| MATLAB | csvread, dlmread. | In the standard library. |
| .Net | FileHelpers - An Automatic File Import/Export Framework by Marcos Meli (LGPL) Blog
Fast CSV Reader by Sébastien Lorion. Open Source class (MIT licence). GemBox.Spreadsheet by GemBox Software for CSV <==> XLS conversion. TFieldedText Reads and writes CSV files using Fielded Text. (Public domain licence) |
|
| OCaml | OCaml CSV
Col: conversion between lists of records and CSV files with header (Camlp4 syntax extension) |
|
| Perl | Text::CSV_XS, Text::CSV_PP, or using a Perl DBI interface: | from CPAN |
| Perl | The first published formal Perl CSV specification. | not from CPAN |
| PHP | fgetcsv() function, fputcsv() function | In the standard library. |
| PSPP | None required. | Available in the GET DATA command and from the graphical interface. |
| Python | Python CSV module | In the standard library. |
| R | read.csv |
In the standard library. |
| Ruby | Ruby CSV module, or FasterCSV by James Gray | In the standard library. |
| Ruby on Rails framework | Convertible to csv | as an add-on (gem or plugin) . |
| Scheme | Chicken Scheme CSV module | |
| VBScript | Parse Csv File | |
| Visual Basic | ParseCSV | |
| Windows Powershell | Export-CSV and Import-CSV Shell builtins | Supports Typed CSV format |
[edit] Data Interpretation
Many applications that import CSV will try to interpret numbers and dates in order to allow sorting or other formatting features. For example, if a CSV field contains a large integer such as 1234567890123456 then it will appear in Gnumeric as 1.2346789012346E+15 and the resulting value is less accurate. Some applications also accept a single quote-character at the beginning of numbers as a way to indicate that it should be displayed as text (typically left aligned while numbers are right aligned).
[edit] Utilities
The csvprint utility will reformat CSV input based on a format string. This can be useful for reordering fields or generating source code or tables as illustrated in the following example:
$ csvprint data.csv "\t{ %0, %1, %2, \"%3\" },\n"
{ 0xC0000008, 0x00060001, NT_STATUS_INVALID_HANDLE, "The handle is invalid." },
csvdiff is a perl script to compare/diff two (comma) separated files with each other. The part that is different from standard diff is, that you'll get the number of the record where the difference occours and the field/column which is different. The separator can be set to the value you want it to, not just comma. Also you can to provide a third file which contains the columnnames in one(!) line separated by your separator. If you do so, columnnames are shown if a difference is found. Example:
$ perl csvdiff.pl -a act.csv -e exp.csv -s ";" -c col_names.csv -k "2" -t -i Record with key "200100500" is different: Actual line 006 > 200100500;200100500;6;;;;;;000;0;2005-12-20;55 < Expected line 008 > 200100500;200100500;6;;;;;;000;0;2005-12-19;55 < Difference in field no.: 11 - field name: Dat_Rueckgabe Actual > 2005-12-20 < Expected > 2005-12-19 <
