[HECnet] CSV Proposal

[Johnny Billquist]

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The C standing for comma is antiquated and outdated and should be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He says, to a crowd of people running antiquated and outdated software and hardware...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

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 have no issue with this except that allowing the columns to appear in any
order, while nice and flexible, makes it harder to write the software. It
does not seem worth the effort to have that flexibility given the low
enthusiasm for writing this software, so a simplification would be to fix
the column order.

It really isn't that hard to write. I've implemented such a thing in many
languages (including very stupid ones) and it is *always* worth the effort.

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?
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.

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? :-)

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

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                                   || "I'm on a bus
                                                                  ||   on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se                         ||   Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                                         ||   tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol