Parsing CSV files in C#, with header

Question

Is there a default/official/recommended way to parse CSV files in C#? I don\'t want to roll my own parser.

Also, I\'ve seen instances of people using ODBC/OLE DB to

Answer 1

In a business application, i use the Open Source project on codeproject.com, CSVReader.

It works well, and has good performance. There is some benchmarking on the link i provided.

A simple example, copied from the project page:

using (CsvReader csv = new CsvReader(new StreamReader("data.csv"), true))
{
    int fieldCount = csv.FieldCount;
    string[] headers = csv.GetFieldHeaders();

    while (csv.ReadNextRecord())
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < fieldCount; i++)
            Console.Write(string.Format("{0} = {1};", headers[i], csv[i]));

        Console.WriteLine();
    }
}

As you can see, it's very easy to work with.