Beware CSV files!

[The_Librarian]

You'd think a CSV is a safe file?

Not quite.

Check this article out.

CSV injection is a nasty buggreh, and still in its infancy.

Going to play around with it and see what fun stuff I can get Excel to do

 

[Genisys]

Using Excel for CSV files... There is the problem right there. Use Notepad or any other editor, really isn't difficult to navigate a CSV file.

 

[vic777]

Interesting, but the real problem is Excel - not CSV

 

[mercurial]

Wow, interesting!

 

[Hamish McPanji]

When i see a CSV file, i run in the other direction. Because chances are i will be assigned to process is. Then end up having to do data entry of some sorts eventually to fix the data.

Yes, i fear data entry....and so am terrified of CSV's

 

[Ho3n3r]

Using Excel for CSV files... There is the problem right there. Use Notepad or any other editor, really isn't difficult to navigate a CSV file.

With 100 columns, that's much harder to read. Excel should be fixed, instead of having to do workarounds for broken apps.

 

[SlinkyMike]

When i see a CSV file, i run in the other direction. Because chances are i will be assigned to process is. Then end up having to do data entry of some sorts eventually to fix the data.

Yes, i fear data entry....and so am terrified of CSV's

You need Python in your life

 

[Hamish McPanji]

You need Python in your life

No thanks, am not gay

 

[AndyC]

Now that is interesting...

 

[SauRoNZA]

Using Excel for CSV files... There is the problem right there. Use Notepad or any other editor, really isn't difficult to navigate a CSV file.

Yeah try do some concatenation on a CSV file using Notepad...

You'd have better luck throwing it at a Linux terminal if it's standard format than using Notepad.

 

[infscrtyrisk]

Notepad ++

 

[Hamish McPanji]

Notepad ++

Yup

Brackets http://brackets.io not too shabby either

 

[Genisys]

Yeah try do some concatenation on a CSV file using Notepad...

You'd have better luck throwing it at a Linux terminal if it's standard format than using Notepad.

There is also open source office alternatives available, which also has spreadsheet tools...

 

[Neoprod]

Yeah try do some concatenation on a CSV file using Notepad...

You'd have better luck throwing it at a Linux terminal if it's standard format than using Notepad.

When I needed to concatenate, I used ye old Windows command prompt.

Textpad (I think) is another very good program for working with big csv files - I've also found wingrep and then grepwin useful on occasions.

Excel is more of a hindrance than anything with it's insta-formatting of dates (timestamps especially) and bigints.

 

[SauRoNZA]

There is also open source office alternatives available, which also has spreadsheet tools...

Yeah for sure.

I was referring to “Excel” as spreadsheet applications in general over text editors.

By far the best CSV editor is iWork Numbers.

 

[SauRoNZA]

When I needed to concatenate, I used ye old Windows command prompt.

Textpad (I think) is another very good program for working with big csv files - I've also found wingrep and then grepwin useful on occasions.

Excel is more of a hindrance than anything with it's insta-formatting of dates (timestamps especially) and bigints.

Yeah all depends on your input data and I agree Excel can be retarded for that.

There are many options from grep to awk to sed or a combination of them even.

But the point was that Notepad is nowhere near Excel for these purposes which was the original argument.

Like I said above if I didn’t automate it already then I’ll do a manual once off in Numbers over most other things.

 

[Dan C]

Interesting, but the real problem is Excel - not CSV

Agreed.

 

[mercurial]

Coda is a next-generation spreadsheet designed to make Excel a thing of the past

 

[Nod]

I use LibreOffice to format and export a CSV to excel.
The fact that you can specify the formatting before it opens the file is a huge plus, and does not try to guess formatting like excel.