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but which delimiter. if you choose pipe ok, now you have to make sure nobody typed a pipe into the input field or spreadsheet, and you cannot store unix comman
by fatneckbeardz 4y ago
but which delimiter.
if you choose pipe ok, now you have to make sure nobody typed a pipe into the input field or spreadsheet, and you cannot store unix commands
if you choose tab, ok, now people will get confused when they try to edit the text file to replace tabs with spaces, and now you have trouble putting code snippets into data fields because they have tabs.
this is the problem and it's why xml/json exist.
in my particular domain, tab separated works pretty well but in a general context of the world at large, i feel like JSON has reasons it exists.
- elcritch 4y agoWell the obvious solution would be ASCII 0x1D (Group Separator)! Accept, no one actually uses those ASCII characters. Kind of bums me out that UNIX basically skipped out on them.
- kevinmgranger 4y agoIt's not a separator character, but at least vim and emacs acknowledge the page feed character. A pittance, I suppose.
- lelanthran 4y ago> It's not a separator character, Isn't it? I thought all the separator characters (0x1e, 0x1f, 0x1c) were specifically for delimiting records, fields and units. What are they for?
- civopsec 4y agoThey’re saying that “page feed character” (I’m guessing form feed) is acknowledged by Emacs, in contrast to those separator characters. I think it’s used to mark sections in Emacs Lisp code.
- hermitcrab 4y agoI agree. Lots of discussion related to proposing that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220841
- toast0 4y ago> but which delimiter Control characters. Like ctrl-A and stuff. Almost nobody has them in their data.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoPipes are quite common, but for tricky data, I'd recommend ¬. It's on most keyboards and I can't think of any other use of it.
- tom_ 4y agoThis symbol is not present on US keyboards.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoI did not know that. It's on most UK keyboards
- mtVessel 4y agoWhat is it called? What's it for?
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoI had to look it up as I don't know what it's called and it's a negation symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logic_symbols As to what it's for, I'd say it's great as a delimiter. I've never used it for its intended purpose.
- civopsec 4y agoBoth pipe and tab are infinitely better for so-called human-readable data compared to comma. Comma doesn’t even work well for numbers since some locales use comma as the decimal separator. And a data format can’t be “human-readable” if you’re not allowed to write numbers in the way that you’re used to write them.