various CVS references

[Skip Montanaro]

    Kevin> Just for reference some Google searches of "cvs spec" "comma
    Kevin> separated values" and some other variants produced

Much appreciated.  I will incorporate some of them into the PEP.

    Kevin> Java
    Kevin> http://ostermiller.org/utils/CSVLexer.html

Interestingly enough, the author considers Excel's format not conformant
with "the generally accepted standards" and requires the programmer to use
special Excel readers and writers.  I wonder who he's been talking to about
standards. ;-)

    Kevin> Perl
    Kevin> http://rath.ca/Misc/Perl_CSV/

    Kevin> http://rath.ca/Misc/Perl_CSV/CSV-2.0.html#csv%20specification

I like that this guy has a BNF diagram for CSV files.  He treats delimiters
and quote characters as static, which we would probably make dynamic.
Perhaps I can come up with something similar for the PEP.  Kind of a Gory
Details appendix.

    Kevin> A search on CPAN for csv yields a lot of different modules, some
    Kevin> with test data.

    Kevin> http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_perl/cpan-search?request=search

CPAN is great if you know what you're looking for but is a morass otherwise.
It gives you lots of choices, but not enough information to decide which
packages are high quality.  The Vaults of Parnassus has the same problem,
but fewer choices.

    Kevin> The TCL standard libs (whatever those are ;-) has a module

    Kevin> http://tcllib.sourceforge.net/doc/csv.html

Looks a bit low level.

    Kevin> MSDN references

    Kevin> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/netdir/ad/comma-separated_value_csv_scripts.asp

Doesn't look all that useful.

    Kevin> http://tit.irk.ru/perlbookshelf/cookbook/ch01_16.htm

Interesting cookbook recipe, but nothing Dave and Cliff don't already know
how to do. ;-)  Besides, it uses regular expressions to parse fields.  As
Jamie Zawinski says:

    Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use
    regular expressions."  Now they have two problems.

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