Question

I have an export functionality that reads data from DB (entire records) and writes them in a .txt file, one record on a row each field being separated by ; . the problem i am facing is that some fields contain CRLFs in it and when i write them to the file it goes to the next line thus destroying the structure of the file.

The only solution is to replace the CRLFs with a custom value, and at import replace back with CRLF. but i don t like this solution because these files are huge and the replace operation decreases performance....

Do you have any other ideas?

thank you!

Answer 1

Yes, use a CSV generator that quotes string values. For example, Python s csv module.

For example (ripped and modified from the csv docs):

import csv
def write(filename):
    spamWriter = csv.writer(open(filename,  w ), quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL)
    spamWriter.writerow([ Spam ] * 5 + [ Baked Beans ])
    spamWriter.writerow([ Spam ,  Lovely Spam ,  Wonderful Spam
bar ])

def read(filename):
    reader = csv.reader(open(filename, "rb"))
    for row in reader:
        print row

write( eggs.csv )
read( eggs.csv )

Outputs:

[ Spam ,  Spam ,  Spam ,  Spam ,  Spam ,  Baked Beans ]
[ Spam ,  Lovely Spam ,  Wonderful Spam
bar ]

Answer 2

If you have control over how the file is exported and imported, then you might want to consider using XML .. also you can use double quotes i believe to indicate literals like "," in the values.

友情链接