Re: [bug-gawk] 4.7 Defining Fields by Content

[Miriam English]

Is it "normal" for csv files to have embedded linefeeds? All the csv 
files I've seen with special characters inside their fields have them 
written as escaped codes (such as \t, \n, \f, and so on) which are 
replaced with the actual characters on use. If raw control characters do 
exist inside fields of csv files then wouldn't a pass through to convert 
them to escaped codes solve that problem?

Cheers,

        - Miriam

Andrew J. Schorr wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 09:40:14AM +0100, Marco Coletti wrote:
> > This is just short of what is needed to correctly parse RFC 4180
> > formatted data, in that it does not account for double quotes
> > appearing as part of a field.
>
> But even with the enhanced FPAT you propose, unless I'm confused,
> it still won't work with records containing embedded linefeed
> characters. We have discussed in the past developing a CSV
> input parser extension, but nobody has implemented it yet.
> If you'd like to develop it, we would welcome the contribution
> of such an extension, possibly for the gawkextlib project if not
> appropriate for inclusion in mainline gawk.
>
> Regards,
> Andy

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