From: Dave Burt <dave@...>
Date: 2006-04-28T00:52:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Q about the FasterCSV

James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Apr 27, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Dave Burt wrote:
>>       :leading_fields =>
>>         /\A#{Regexp.escape(@col_sep)}+/,      # for empty leading fields
> 
> You should modify the above line too.  It takes both to correctly parse
> some lines:
> 
> /\A\s*#{Regexp.escape(@col_sep)}+/

I looked at this, but I deduced from [1] that a number of fields equal
to the match size are added, so (I guess) "  ,, foo" would get extra
leading fields: [nil, nil, nil, nil, "foo"]. So I skipped it. I'm also
guessing the OP doesn't need it, anyway.

> Looks good to me.  Just don't hold your breath waiting on the patch...  ;)

Oh, I don't want the patch. It's a terrible idea! "foo, bar, 'baz'"
aren't CSV, they're CASWSSV (comma and some white-space separated
values). That's got to be a whole new library :)

Cheers,
Dave

[1] faster_csv.rb lines 1114..1115:
      csv = if parse.sub!(@parsers[:leading_fields], "")
        [nil] * $&.length

P.S.: There's a bug here, and not just here, I think. Maybe
init_separators should raise an exception if @col_sep.size != 1, or use
options[:col_sep][0,1]. It currently barfs late and in various
interesting ways for multi-character values of col_sep.