From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2009-02-27T02:11:37+09:00
Subject: Re: FasterCSV: preserving quoted strings

On Feb 26, 2009, at 8:14 AM, BIl Kleb wrote:

> Google et al are failing me: How do I preserve quoted
> CSV strings on output?

I'm not totally sure I understand the question, but your test made it  
look like your data was one field you wanted to be able to read in.   
If so, you'll need to write is out properly escaped first:

require 'rubygems'
require 'faster_csv'
require 'test/unit'

class ConversionTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_preserve_quoted_strings
    field = '"string",2,0.3'
    csv   = [field].to_csv  # => "\"\"\"string\"\",2,0.3\"\n"
    assert_equal(field, csv.parse_csv.first)
  end
end

If I'm wrong and you meant for that to be three separate fields, then  
just bust them up to get the valid CSV:

require 'rubygems'
require 'faster_csv'
require 'test/unit'

class ConversionTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def test_preserve_quoted_strings
    fields = '"string",2,0.3'.split(",")
    csv    = fields.to_csv  # => "\"\"\"string\"\"\",2,0.3\n"
    assert_equal(fields, csv.parse_csv)
  end
end

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II