CSV application support
The comma-separated values file format is a very simple data file format that is supported by almost all spreadsheet software such as Excel (although Excel uses the list separator of the current locale settings, which is a semicolon instead of a comma for many locales), OpenOffice.org Calc and Gnumeric as well as many online spreadsheet services such as EditGrid and Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Many database management systems support the reading and writing of CSV files.
Programming language tools
Any programming language that has input/output and string processing functionality is capable of reading and writing CSV files. The following is a list of individual programming language support for the comma-separated values format.
Language |
Tool |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
BASIC |
none required |
supported internally |
C |
Free Tools: CSV module,
|
No comments in code. separated documentation. |
Cocoa/Objective-C |
cCSVparse by Michael Stapelberg |
BSD-licensed CSV parsing class |
Haskell |
Not sure if RFC compliant. |
|
Java |
Several free CSV tools exist: Super CSV Sophisticated reading, writing (automatic conversion of data into type, automatic constraint checker). and commercial tools: Ricebridge Java CSV Component. There are also JDBC drivers available: 3 4 5 6 and an ODBC driver: 7 |
|
Javascript |
None. Use Javascript's split function for now (e.g. implement your own CSV parser). |
Anyone find third party libraries for this? Would be nice to parse CSV returned as an XmlHttpRequest response. Though with MS environment, can mix Javascript code with VBScript libraries (mentioned in this table) to do the job. |
LaTeX |
from CTAN |
|
LISP |
fare-csv is an ASDF package, csv-parser is a .lisp file |
|
Mathematica |
|
|
MATLAB |
In the standard library. |
|
.Net |
FileHelpers - An Automatic File Import/Export Framework by Marcos Meli (LGPL) Blog Fast CSV Reader by Sébastien Lorion. Open Source class (MIT licence). GemBox.Spreadsheet by GemBox Software for CSV <==> XLS <==> XLSX conversion. TFieldedText Reads and writes CSV files using Fielded Text. (Public domain licence) |
|
OCaml |
Col: conversion between lists of records and CSV files with header (Camlp4 syntax extension) |
|
Perl |
Text::CSV_XS, Text::CSV_PP, or using a Perl DBI interface: DBD::CSV, DBD::AnyData, csvdiff - compare two csv-files |
from CPAN |
Perl |
not from CPAN |
|
PHP |
In the standard library. |
|
Python |
In the standard library. |
|
R |
|
In the standard library. |
Ruby |
Ruby CSV module, or FasterCSV by James Gray |
In the standard library. |
as an add-on (gem or plugin) . |
||
Scheme |
||
Visual Basic or VBScript |
Data Interpretation
Many applications that import CSV will try to interpret numbers and dates in order to allow sorting or other formatting features. For example, if a CSV field contains a large integer such as 1234567890123456 then it will appear in Gnumeric as 1.2346789012346E+15 and the resulting value is less accurate. Some applications also accept a single quote-character at the beginning of numbers as a way to indicate that it should be displayed as text (typically left aligned while numbers are right aligned).
Utilities
The csvprint utility will reformat CSV input based on a format string. This can be useful for reordering fields or generating source code or tables as illustrated in the following example:
$ csvprint data.csv "\t{ %0, %1, %2, \"%3\" },\n"
{ 0xC0000008, 0x00060001, NT_STATUS_INVALID_HANDLE, "The handle is invalid." },
csvdiff is a perl script to compare/diff two (comma) separated files with each other. The part that is different to standard diff is, that you'll get the number of the record where the difference occours and the field/column which is different. The separator can be set to the value you want it to, not just comma. Also you can to provide a third file which contains the columnnames in one(!) line separated by your separator. If you do so, columnnames are shown if a difference is found. Example:
$ perl csvdiff.pl -a act.csv -e exp.csv -s ";" -c col_names.csv -k "2" -t -i
Record with key "200100500" is different:
Actual line 006 > 200100500;200100500;6;;;;;;000;0;2005-12-20;55 <
Expected line 008 > 200100500;200100500;6;;;;;;000;0;2005-12-19;55 <
Difference in field no.: 11 - field name: Dat_Rueckgabe
Actual > 2005-12-20 <
Expected > 2005-12-19 <
FTEditor is a Fielded Text editor which lets you view the contents of a CSV file simultaneously in an edit and grid window. As the text is modified in the edit window, the grid is interactively updated in the grid window with color highlighting showing corresponding data fields in each view. FTEditor uses Fielded Text to determine the structure of the CSV file. FTEditor can also interactively create and modify Fielded Text Meta files.