Issue reading csv lines that contain "

[Tiberius Marius]

I need to read a csv file from the disk and manipulate the data inside.My problem is that if the csv (excel format) contains "" in any of it's values the whole string line gets saved/displayed incorrectly . For example for the line in the csv file :

1,393275,57319 57321 57323 57325 57327,5_5,200000,393277,57329 57331 57333 57335 57337,3_3,200000,400000,"gi,gi",,,,,,BASS/2.4,,1

it gets read in java as :

"1,393275,57319 57321 57323 57325 57327,5_5,200000,393277,57329 57331 57333 57335 57337,3_3,200000,400000,""gi,gi"",,,,,,BASS/2.4,,1";;;;

instead as :

1,393275,57319 57321 57323 57325 57327,5_5,200000,393277,57329 57331 57333 57335 57337,3_3,200000,400000,"gi,gi",,,,,,BASS/2.4,,1

My code is :

String csvFile = "resources/testcsxs.csv" ;
String l = "";

try {
			
			BufferedReader cz = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(csvFile));
			while ((l = cz.readLine()) != null ){
				System.out.println(l);
			}

What am i doing wrong , how can i read a csv file (excel saved) without getting "" added incorrectly ?

[Matthew Brown]

Parsing CSV supporting the full specification (including ", escaping " when it appears in a value etc.) is not trivial. My advice would be to not do it yourself and use a CSV parsing library. For example, http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-csv/

Edit: I may have misread the specific problem you are having - sorry - although I'd still stand by the advice. It seems unlikely, though, that Java is reading characters that aren't there.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Tiberius Marius wrote:What am i doing wrong,

Nothing, as far as I can see. And that's the problem: you're not doing anything (at least not in the code you posted). You're simply reading a line and printing it out.

how can i read a csv file (excel saved) without getting "" added incorrectly ?

Follow Matthew's advice. You might be able to get something close with l.split(","), but it's unlikely to work in every case. As he says, CSV is not simple to implement correctly.

Winston

[Tiberius Marius]

The problem was the regional settings on my computer . Once set to US the section i posted outputs expected results , aka the exact line from the csv file.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Tiberius Marius wrote:The problem was the regional settings on my computer . Once set to US the section i posted outputs expected results , aka the exact line from the csv file.

???

Based on the code you posted, I can't see how that would make a blind bit of difference - unless it changes what Excel produces - because all I see is a Java version of cat.

Winston