From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2001-11-05T05:40:12+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24352] Re: Joys of eval

Hi, Bill.

Yes, I have been using your regexp with no problems.  It just had finally 
noticed that Ruby was parsing the contents of an array almost exactly like a 
CSV file.  So I started playing with eval.  I still haven't tried the regexp 
on a significant sample of files.  I'll get back to you when I get into 
trouble.  I still think it is a cool regexp.  Thanks again.

On Sunday 04 November 2001 02:25 pm, you wrote:
> Hi Albert,
>
>
> Just wondering if the regexp version had indeed worked out OK, or have
> you encountered data since then it couldn't handle?
>
> (The one in [ruby-talk:22534] didn't handle embedded quotes for instance;
> the one in [ruby-talk:22537] can handle embedded quotes, but, I suspect,
> probably not the way something like MSAccess might output them, given
> what was learned about Excel's seemingly strange way of quoting in
> [ruby-talk:22541] . . . :-)
>
> By the way I recently discovered that the flatten!.compact! used in
> the code referenced above should be changed to flatten.compact without
> the exclamation points.  Or at least the 'flatten' at any rate - because
> the 'flatten!' version "returns nil if no modifications were made."
> (Pickaxe, Ch. 22)  Whereas, we need the resulting array always, modified
> or not, to pass on to 'compact'.
>
> If you have need of handling embedded quotes in the CSV parsing, perhaps
> you could post some examples here of the quoting syntax MSAccess uses to
> encode the data?  I'm pretty sure the regexp can be adapted to handle it.
>
> For instance, Excel had taken:
>
> +-----+---------------+
>
> |blerb|"hey,you","man,|
>
> +-----+---------------+
>
> And had written (to the .csv file):
>
> blerb,"""hey,you"",""man,"
>
> . . . But, odd-looking or not, this appears well within the realm of
> regexps to handle.  :-)
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Bill