Can a CSV file have a comment

Question

Is there any official way to allow a CSV formatted file to allow comments  either on its own line OR at the end of a line   I tried checking wikipedia on this and also RFC 4180 but both do not mention anything which leads me to believe that it s not part of the file format so it s bad luck to me and I should then use a seperate ReadMe txt file thingy to explain the file   Lastly  i know it s easy for me to add my own comments in  but i was hoping that something like Excel could just import it straight away with no need for a consumer to have to customize the import process   So  thoughts

User · Answer

I think the best way to add comments to a CSV file would be to add a  Comments  field or record right into the data   Most CSV-parsing applications that I ve used implement both field-mapping and record-choosing  So  to comment on the properties of a field  add a record just for field descriptions  To comment on a record  add a field at the end of it  well  all records  really  just for comments   These are the only two reasons I can think of to comment a CSV file  But the only problem I can foresee would be programs that refuse to accept the file at all if any single record doesn t pass some validation rules  In that case  you d have trouble writing a string-type field description record for any numeric fields   I am by no means an expert  though  so feel free to point out any mistakes in my theory

User · Answer

No  CSV doesn t specify any way of tagging comments - they will just be loaded by programs like Excel as additional cells containing text   The closest you can manage  with CSV being imported into a specific application such as Excel  is to define a special way of tagging comments that Excel will ignore  For Excel  you can  hide  the comment  to a limited degree  by embedding it into a formula  For example  try importing the following csv file into Excel    N  This is a comment and will appear as a simple zero value in excel   John  Doe  24   You still end up with a cell in the spreadsheet that displays the number 0  but the comment is hidden   Alternatively  you can hide the text by simply padding it out with spaces so that it isn t displayed in the visible part of cell                                 This is a sort-of hidden comment   John  Doe  24   Note that you need to follow the comment text with a comma so that Excel fills the following cell and thus hides any part of the text that doesn t fit in the cell   Nasty hacks  which will only work with Excel  but they may suffice to make your output look a little bit tidier after importing

User · Answer

In engineering data  it is common to see the   symbol in the first column used to signal a comment  I use the ostermiller CSV parsing library for Java to read and process such files  That library allows you to set the comment character  After the parse operation you get an array just containing the real data  no comments

User · Answer

If you re parsing the file with a FOR command in a batch file a semicolon works      REM test bat contents  for  F  tokens 1-3 delims      a in  test csv  do  Echo   a    b    c      test csv contents  this line is a comment    1 ignore this line no it shouldn t  2 parse this line yes it should    3 ignore this line no it shouldn t  4 parse this line yes it should    OUTPUT   2  parse this line  yes it should   4  parse this line  yes it should

User · Answer

The CSV  standard   such as it is  does not dictate how comments should be handled  no  it s up to the application to establish a convention and stick with it

User · Answer

A Comma Separated File is really just a text file where the lines consist of values separated by commas   There is no standard which defines the contents of a CSV file  so there is no defined way of indicating a comment  It depends on the program which will be importing the CSV file   Of course  this is usually Excel  You should ask yourself how does Excel define a comment  In other words  what would make Excel ignore a line  or part of a line  in the CSV file  I m not aware of anything which would do this

User · Answer

If you need something like         A                                 B -- -------------------------------- --- 1     My comment  something else       2    1                                 2   Your CSV may contain the following lines     My comment  something else  1 2   Pay close attention at the  quotes  in the first line   When converting your text to columns using the Excel wizard  remember checking the  Treat consecutive delimiters as one   setting it to use  quotes  as delimiter   Thus  Excel will split the text at the commas  keeping the  comment  line as a single column value  and it will remove the quotes

[csv] Can a CSV file have a comment?

Examples related to csv

Examples related to comments

Examples related to standards

Examples related to file-format