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by Rendello 275 days ago
This is very apparent in my work right now, as well as "all models are wrong, some models are useful".

I'm parsing some "simple" CSVs into a DB, but I have to keep the concrete representation intact for another purpose. The DB format will be similar to the CSV format, but can't be quite the same. I would've figured this would take a day or two (I've written many parsers before), but the amount of details I have to consider has lead me to circle back to this problem for a long time.
1 comments
noosphr 275 days ago
If we used ascii delimited values none of this would be a problem. The amount of effort spent on csv must be close to a million man years and all because we want to edit the files with a text editor without a special mode.
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Rendello 275 days ago
The files are CSV-adjacent, I should say. The issue here isn't the delimiter in fact, it's the fact that the format differs slightly between files, even within the same project. That, and the mismatch with the SQL DB format I want.
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noosphr 275 days ago
With the predefined ascii delimiters there is no difference between formats, because you can't choose anything but the dimiters ascii gives you.
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noosphr 275 days ago
After rereading the post I realize that the op was talking about the schema of the files rather than the adhoc nature of trying to decode escape characters.

Ascii delimiters will not save you there.

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