5 ms·

Sad that the ASCII specification includes 2 codes: 30 and 31, respectively field separator and record separator, precisely to answer cleanly the need that CSV f

Sad that the ASCII specification includes 2 codes: 30 and 31, respectively field separator and record separator, precisely to answer cleanly the need that CSV fullfils addresses. During the 90's I was anal for using them, pissing the hell out of my teammates and users for forcing them to use these 'standard compliant' files. Had to give up.

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
Standards-compliance and using esoteric features over catering for the realities of usability. Your coworkers were right to steamroll you.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  If these ASCII code points were actively used, the support in common editors that are used for editing CSV files would become much better very fast.
baggy_trough 2y ago
A valuable lesson in user experience triumphing over pedantic correctness.
- bandie91 2y ago
  a lesson in confusing representation and data. if users can learn not to edit xls in text editor and to "go to next cell" type "tab" in spreadsheet software, they can learn edit csv in a proper csv editor. the only trap was that we made a non-text format so simple that tricked ourself that "it's only plain text".
snthpy 2y ago
I've recently learned about them and an trying to revive usage - .asv and .usv files. The .usv separators make things easier to read at the expense of a bit more space. Main point for me making the parsing so much simpler. Who writes .csv files by hand anyway?
- soared 2y ago
  Editing csv by hand is something I’ve seen a lot for internal-only software where every user is a super-power user who need to move small but bulk amounts of data and sometimes make small edits for formatting. Easiest example is geo, I need 20 states listed as US-CO, US-CA, etc but one tool exported as US CO.
hanche 2y ago
Sqlite still supports it: .mode ascii
viraptor 2y ago
They're hard to type though. You need to teach people how to use those -vs- just using a comma.
- jeff-hykin 2y ago
  And they still don't fix the escaping problem. You might as well use a niche utf8 emoji as a separator. Editors at least know how to consistently render an emoji.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Hilariously I have actually seen this done.
    - malux85 2y ago
      Which emoji was it? Scissors?
      - giraffe_lady 2y ago
        Nah nothing funny like that, just a shape I think blue circle.
  - applied_heat 2y ago
    Does your data include ascii 30 and 31? As a co-op student I used a library to achieve fool proof encoding in csv so it escaped and quoted everything as necessary so commas,\, and quotes and any other character could be included in the data, but it was rejected since the plain text files were difficult to read and edit by hand!
    - drwu 2y ago
      One typical scenario is to embed a CSV (or whatever it is called) into another one.
- NautilusWave 2y ago

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

Standards-compliance and using esoteric features over catering for the realities of usability. Your coworkers were right to steamroll you.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
If these ASCII code points were actively used, the support in common editors that are used for editing CSV files would become much better very fast.

baggy_trough 2y ago

A valuable lesson in user experience triumphing over pedantic correctness.

bandie91 2y ago
a lesson in confusing representation and data. if users can learn not to edit xls in text editor and to "go to next cell" type "tab" in spreadsheet software, they can learn edit csv in a proper csv editor. the only trap was that we made a non-text format so simple that tricked ourself that "it's only plain text".

snthpy 2y ago

I've recently learned about them and an trying to revive usage - .asv and .usv files. The .usv separators make things easier to read at the expense of a bit more space. Main point for me making the parsing so much simpler. Who writes .csv files by hand anyway?

soared 2y ago
Editing csv by hand is something I’ve seen a lot for internal-only software where every user is a super-power user who need to move small but bulk amounts of data and sometimes make small edits for formatting. Easiest example is geo, I need 20 states listed as US-CO, US-CA, etc but one tool exported as US CO.

hanche 2y ago

Sqlite still supports it: .mode ascii

viraptor 2y ago

They're hard to type though. You need to teach people how to use those -vs- just using a comma.

jeff-hykin 2y ago
And they still don't fix the escaping problem. You might as well use a niche utf8 emoji as a separator. Editors at least know how to consistently render an emoji.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Hilariously I have actually seen this done.
  - malux85 2y ago
    Which emoji was it? Scissors?
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      Nah nothing funny like that, just a shape I think blue circle.
- applied_heat 2y ago
  Does your data include ascii 30 and 31? As a co-op student I used a library to achieve fool proof encoding in csv so it escaped and quoted everything as necessary so commas,\, and quotes and any other character could be included in the data, but it was rejected since the plain text files were difficult to read and edit by hand!
  - drwu 2y ago
    One typical scenario is to embed a CSV (or whatever it is called) into another one.
NautilusWave 2y ago