CSV File - Problems extracting data

[Chris_Evans]

Hi there,
I have a CSV file which is causing me problems. It is seperated by commas (obviously) but there are description fields which just to be a pain have commas in. So to fix this, all the description fields have had a " put around them and the normal fields haven't. This has left me wondering how to handle it. Example below:

CSV File:

id,name,location,description
10011,chris evans,earth,"hello, there, how are you?"

19022,jim bob,planet mars,"aia, aaja"

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Chris

[niclarke]

Are you able to just change the , (on creating the csv file, but not in the comments of course) to another character e.g. | ?

As then this will stop you from having a problem.

Nick

[Chris_Evans]

Unfortunately not. They only give the option of , and then enclosing their commas in the descriptions in ".

Thanks,

Chris

[niclarke]

This might be a bit long winded, but what about:

Reading the file in line by line replacing ALL , to | and then do a substr and replace the | within the "comment" back to ,

Then save to a new file and use fgetcsv (using | insted of ,) or simple from there use the explode function.

Nick

[Chris_Evans]

That sounds good, I'll try it, thanks. 🙂

[Weedpacket]

Consider also looking at the [man]fgetcsv[/man] function.

[Chris_Evans]

Superb Weekpacket! Thank you.