From: Jan Topinski <simcha@...>
Date: 2006-03-29T01:08:55+09:00
Subject: Re: Changing the quote-character in csv parsing

Hi,
Don't know how it is with fastercsv but csv.rb has double quote hardcoded as
I understand. I think best is to substitute all double quots in your text
with single and vice versa. You can do it with gsub this way:


line.gsub!(/'|\"/){ |c|
  if c == "'"
    "\""
  else
    "'"
  end
}

jan

Jens Auer wrote:

> Hi,
> I have a bunch of files containing lines as comma-seperated values.
> Unfortunately, the character used for quoting is a single quote (') and
> not the double quote ("). How can I tell the csv library (or fastercsv
> or any other csv-parsing library) which character is used for quoting?
> Some of the files contain fields like 'quoted, but with comma', which
> are seperated into two fields at the comma:
> irb(main):003:0> line = "one, 'quoted', 'quoted, but with comma'"
> => "one, 'quoted', 'quoted, but with comma'"
> irb(main):006:0> CSV::parse_line('some words "some quoted text" some
> more words', ' ')
> => ["some", "words", "some quoted text", "some", "more", "words"]
> irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'
> => true
> irb(main):002:0> require_gem 'fastercsv'
> => true
> irb(main):004:0> line.parse_csv
> => ["one", " 'quoted'", " 'quoted", " but with comma'"]
> 
> The output should be ["one", "'quoted'", "'quoted, but with comma'"]
> 
> I already have searched the rdoc for the csv library without any success.