From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2009-04-29T21:46:20+09:00
Subject: Re: FCSV importing file to Excel

On Apr 28, 2009, at 11:13 PM, Phil Swazey wrote:

> I have a csv file that I am inputting into an excel spreadsheet. One  
> of
> the fields is a hyperlink:
> =HYPERLINK("http://www.radiofreetexas.org/","ClickHere")
>
> When FCSV comes across the file to process it and insert pass the data
> to be inserted into the Excel file I get an error:
> C:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/fastercsv-1.2.3/lib/faster_csv.rb: 
> 1592:in
> `shift': Unclosed quoted field on line 1.  
> (FasterCSV::MalformedCSVError)
> from

FasterCSV is complaining that your data isn't valid CSV data.  If you  
showed the entire field above, that's true.

In CSV, a field that contains commas or quotes must be enclosed in  
quotes ad have the inner quotes escaped.  Thus, to be valid the above  
field should be:

"=HYPERLINK(""http://www.radiofreetexas.org/"", ""ClickHere"")"

Unfortunately, I can't think of an easy way to break up data like  
that.  You would likely need to build your own parser to handle it.

Sorry I wasn't more help.

James Edward Gray II