Issue 84048

Summary:

CSV import brakes on in-text double-quotes.

Product:

Calc

Reporter:

stlman <stlman>

Component:

open-import

Assignee:

spreadsheet <spreadsheet>

Status:

CLOSED DUPLICATE

QA Contact:

issues@sc <issues>

Severity:

Trivial

Priority:

CC:

issues, kpalagin

Version:

OOo 2.3

Target Milestone:

---

Hardware:

All

OS:

All

Issue Type:

DEFECT

Latest Confirmation in:

---

Developer Difficulty:

---

Attachments:

Description	Flags
another example of the problem	none

Description stlman 2007-11-28 12:30:56 UTC

Greetings All.

The issue has been discussed in the ticket 31441 but I really would like to
reopen the discussion. Let me describe my background a bit. I use a database
application which exports data as CSV. I cannot change neither the DB nor the
application in any way. There are several columns which contain user-entered
text (without any constraints). There are chances that I can make the author of
the application export better formed CSV. Which means backslash escaping

As far as I know CSV there is a "tradition" to escape special characters with a
"\". The tradition wich, unfortunately, OO does not obey. I suggest adding
support for backslash-escaping in CSV filters (both import and export).

PS. P2 because of data gets lost quite easyli.

Comment 1 kpalagin 2008-01-10 21:05:00 UTC

Please see http://sc.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=2091 and 
the whole thread.
Then consider discussing this in spreadsheet development list.

Comment 2 plouj 2008-02-05 05:35:51 UTC

Created attachment 51369 [details]
another example of the problem

Comment 3 plouj 2008-02-05 05:54:56 UTC

Sorry, the above attachment doesn't belong to this bug.
Admins: please remove it from this bug report if possible.

Comment 4 andrew 2009-09-30 00:47:55 UTC

According to the standard, 

"If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote
appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with
another double quote."

See: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180

OOo does properly support the standard and import a double quote escaped by a
double quote. I recommend that the reporter use a script or macro to transform
the input to a valid CSV file before import.

Strictly speaking, A backslash is wrong. The requester, however, is asking that
OOo be modified to support a method that used to be common. I cannot comment on
whether or not this was ever standard, just common. I would be inclined to call
this an enhancement request, not a defect report. 

Test by pasting this into a Calc document:

"aaa","b""bb","ccc"
"aaa","b\"bb","ccc"

Comment 5 ooo 2009-10-02 15:28:05 UTC

There's already an issue for this.

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 78926 ***

Comment 6 ooo 2009-10-02 15:28:31 UTC

Closing dup.