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Comma or dot separators caught me out once. In the Anglo-Saxon world, we write 3,000.00. In many continental European countries and countries like Brazil, the
by wenc 6y ago
Comma or dot separators caught me out once.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, we write 3,000.00.
In many continental European countries and countries like Brazil, the same number is written 3.000,00.
I once generated a CSV in my program which could not be read correctly in Excel in Brazil. I later figured out that I had to use another delimiter than a comma, because the comma was the decimal separator.
- garaetjjte 6y agoYeah, Excel idea that .csv parsing behavior should depend on regional settings is just crazy. "c" in csv stands for comma, not semicolon!
- GekkePrutser 6y agoOoooh is that why CSV files never open properly for me. I always have to do "File -> Open" instead of just doubleclicking because then I get everything in one column. Indeed if I do file -> Open it defaults to semicolon. Grrr. I never understood why this happened, I thought the developers of Excel were just stupid. Actually now that I understand why, I still think so :P Indeed CSV means Comma Separated Values.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoYes and we in Europe use DD-MM-YYYY not MM-DD-YYYY. Excel is very dumb in how it deals with this. When it thinks dates should be DD-MM and you paste a bunch of dates in MM-DD format it will parse the 'invalid' combos correctly (like 01-31) but it will leave the others alone. It should just realise "hey this is not the format I expect" and do them all correctly). Because if you don't notice you now have a whole bunch of half correct / half incorrect data and no way to tell which is which. it doesn't even flag the cells with a warning or comment. Or even pop up a warning to the user that something is off. Also, if I paste a whole load of numbers starting with zeros then YES I want them as text, not for them to be changed to 1.374E+22. Great with stuff like serial numbers or IMEIs. Microsoft with all their self-proclaimed AI chops should really apply some of that to Office. All these things have worked this way since the 90s. PS: Part of the issue is also that MS doesn't have an intuitive application for databases, and because nobody groks Access everyone uses Excel as a database which it isn't. Causing a stinking pile un unmaintainable VLOOKUP crap.
- account42 6y ago> Yes and we in Europe use DD-MM-YYYY not MM-DD-YYYY. While you should be using YYYY-MM-DD. Please at least use a different separator if you don't.