[HECnet] CSV Proposal

[Brian Hechinger]

On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 06:34:14PM +0200, Johnny Billquist wrote:
On 2013-05-19 18:14, Brian Hechinger wrote:
On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 05:02:18PM +0100, Robert Jarratt wrote:

Well, if the separator is | then it isn't a CSV file :-)

While I do understand the origins of the term CSV, the C really doesn
stand for character. Tabs are used quite commonly as well as commas. Any
character is valid, so long as it's accepted by all consumers of said
file.

The C standing for comma is antiquated and outdated and should be
changed. In my not so humble opinion, anyway. :)

He says, to a crowd of people running antiquated and outdated software 
and hardware... :-D

Maybe I worded that wrong. An antiquated and outdated term that was
incorrect shortly after it was created. There's a big difference there.   :)

Anyway, while I think I agree that technically, C stands for comma, I 
also think | is a better separator in this case.
Feel free to call it anything. The acronym for the format is less 
important. We could call it BSV then.

I vote HSV. HECnet Separated Values. That way we can use whatever the
HEC we want. :)

I honestly don't know what I think on that subject. Or, actually, I do. 
I think it would be even better to just have key-value pairs. Why 
overcomplicate things?

The problem with key-value pairs is they work great for single sets of
data but quickly turn into either INI files or something that quickly
aproaches being similar to JSON. CSV (sorry, HSV) is nothing more than a
simple way to store multiple sets of key-value pairs.

Honestly, this is all a moot argument considering the fact that your
data format needs to match whomever you want to be able to read it. If
you don't care that I can read it, well then it doesn't really matter
does it? :)

Any unknown key is just ignored. We could expand with new keys without 
having the code synced. And then the values can hold any character 
except newline.

This is pretty much what header indexed CSV gives us.

Actually I am thinking that I wouldn't mind writing the program myself, but
don't wait for me, I have a host of other things I want to do as well.

I'm always open to writing anything. :)

Knock one out for RSX? :-)

Gladly! Once I have more time (give it a month or so) I'd be more than
happy to take a stab at writing stuff for RSX/RSTS/etc.

I'll try and get back with some more thoughts about file formats and 
whatnot in a while. My pizza just arrived...

Mmmm, pizza. I just had home made Feijoada. :)

-brian