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by ZenoArrow 3438 days ago
I could do with those suggestions too, we have a strong need for a CSV validation tool.

After a brief search, this seems promising:

https://theodi.org/blog/introducing-csvlint

2 comments

CSVLint is useful in terms of identifying potential parsing issues, though I think the larger issue is that very few applications actually generate valid CSV files - even Excel has it's issues with certain encodings.

In most cases programmers seem to have an incorrect set of assumptions around encodings, escaping etc.

What do you do for work that you have a strong need for a CSV validation tool?
I'm a software tester, but the company I work for gets a lot of third-party data from CSV files, which frequently do not match the requirements set out for those files. Using a CSV validation tool (ideally a web service controlled by the company I work for) would allow our clients to validate the files before they sent them to us.

I'm slowly putting together my own solution for this, but if suitable open-source software already exists I'd be happy to make use of or modify that.

I'm guessing you'd want the validation tool to be controlled by the company you work for, because of the sensitivity of the data being processed?

What type of data/industry is it? It'd help us to know where to look for people that might need us.