Is there a way to include commas in CSV columns without breaking the formatting?

Question

I've got a two column CSV with a name and a number. Some people's name use commas, for example Joe Blow, CFA. This comma breaks the CSV format, since it's interpreted as a new column.

I've read up and the most common prescription seems to be replacing that character, or replacing the delimiter, with a new value (e.g. this|that|the, other).

I'd really like to keep the comma separator (I know excel supports other delimiters but other interpreters may not). I'd also like to keep the comma in the name, as Joe Blow| CFA looks pretty silly.

Is there a way to include commas in CSV columns without breaking the formatting, for example by escaping them?

Answer 1

Enclose the field in quotes, e.g.

field1_value,field2_value,"field 3,value",field4, etc...

See wikipedia.

Updated:

To encode a quote, use ", one double quote symbol in a field will be encoded as "", and the whole field will become """". So if you see the following in e.g. Excel:

---------------------------------------
| regular_value |,,,"|  ,"", |"""   |"|
---------------------------------------

the CSV file will contain:

regular_value,",,,""",","""",","""""""",""""

A comma is simply encapsulated using quotes, so , becomes ",".

A comma and quote needs to be encapsulated and quoted, so "," becomes """,""".

Answer 2

The problem with the CSV format, is there's not one spec, there are several accepted methods, with no way of distinguishing which should be used (for generate/interpret). I discussed all the methods to escape characters (newlines in that case, but same basic premise) in another post. Basically it comes down to using a CSV generation/escaping process for the intended users, and hoping the rest don't mind.

Reference spec document.

Answer 3

I found that some applications like Numbers in Mac ignore the double quote if there is space before it.

a, "b,c" doesn't work while a,"b,c" works.

Answer 4

If you want to make that you said, you can use quotes. Something like this

$name = "Joe Blow, CFA.";
$arr[] = "\"".$name."\"";

so now, you can use comma in your name variable.

Answer 5

You need to quote that values.
Here is a more detailed spec.

Answer 6

In addition to the points in other answers: one thing to note if you are using quotes in Excel is the placement of your spaces. If you have a line of code like this:

print '%s, "%s", "%s", "%s"' % (value_1, value_2, value_3, value_4)

Excel will treat the initial quote as a literal quote instead of using it to escape commas. Your code will need to change to

print '%s,"%s","%s","%s"' % (value_1, value_2, value_3, value_4)

It was this subtlety that brought me here.

Answer 7

I faced the same problem and quoting the , did not help. Eventually, I replaced the , with +, finished the processing, saved the output into an outfile and replaced the + with ,. This may seem ugly but it worked for me.

Answer 8

Depending on your language, there may be a to_json method available. That will escape many things that break CSVs.

Answer 9

You could encode your values, for example in PHP base64_encode($str) / base64_decode($str)

IMO this is simpler than doubling up quotes, etc.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.base64-encode.php

The encoded values will never contain a comma so every comma in your CSV will be a separator.

Answer 10

You can use Template literals (Template strings)

e.g -

`"${item}"`

Answer 11

You can use the Text_Qualifier field in your Flat file connection manager to as ". This should wrap your data in quotes and only separate by commas which are outside the quotes.

Answer 12

First, if item value has double quote character ("), replace with 2 double quote character ("")

item = item.ToString().Replace("""", """""")

Finally, wrap item value:

ON LEFT: With double quote character (")

ON RIGHT: With double quote character (") and comma character (,)

csv += """" & item.ToString() & ""","

Answer 13

Double quotes not worked for me, it worked for me \". If you want to place a double quotes as example you can set \"\".

You can build formulas, as example:

fprintf(strout, "\"=if(C3=1,\"\"\"\",B3)\"\n");

will write in csv:

=IF(C3=1,"",B3)

Answer 14

May not be what is needed here but it's a very old question and the answer may help others. A tip I find useful with importing into Excel with a different separator is to open the file in a text editor and add a first line like:

sep=|

where | is the separator you wish Excel to use. Alternatively you can change the default separator in Windows but a bit long-winded:

Control Panel>Clock & region>Region>Formats>Additional>Numbers>List separator [change from comma to your preferred alternative]. That means Excel will also default to exporting CSVs using the chosen separator.