[teddyh]

The article talks about reading and parsing CSV data of unknown variants, but then skips to the solution being using a different format altogether. But you can only switch to a different format if you are producing data, not if you are reading it!

And if you are in control of producing data, just produce strict RFC 4180-compliant CSV data and everybody will be able to read it just fine. There is no need to make your reader’s lives difficult by using yet another non-standard data format.

See also: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39679753>

[OscarCunningham]

I just had a look at RFC 4180. This is the grammar they suggest:

> file = [header CRLF] record *(CRLF record) [CRLF]

I find it kind of wild that you have to have at least one record. Suppose I have a program that lists the events that occurred on a given day. How do I represent the fact that the program ran successfully but that there weren't any events on that day?

[joseda-hg]

Event - Loging Started Aditionally, Loging Ended (for the day) allows you to check for intermediate crashes and startup errors, kinda like a pulse / health check

Not necessarily how I'd do it intuitively, but doesn't seem that crazy

[gnu8]

Easy, count running the report as an event.

[7bit]

That isn't a problem of the file format. That's a problem of your process.

[kitd]

> yet another non-standard data format.

Tbf, ASCII delimiter characters have been around since the 1960s. They're not exactly reinventing the wheel

[lazide]

It’s the classic ‘self driving is easy when we modify the world to be what we want’ type solution.

[willcipriano]

"Politics is easy, the problem is we aren't working together!"

[fragmede]

Sqlite isn't a standard per-se, but outputting an Sqlite db file, if you're writing the export code, is easy enough, and enough of a standard that I dare say you'd be doing fine to output .db files marked as sqpite.