Dealing with commas in a CSV file

Question

I am looking for suggestions on how to handle a csv file that is being created, then uploaded by our customers, and that may have a comma in a value, like a company name.

Answer 1

I generally URL-encode the fields which can have any commas or any special chars. And then decode it when it is being used/displayed in any visual medium.

(commas becomes %2C)

Every language should have methods to URL-encode and decode strings.

e.g., in java

URLEncoder.encode(myString,"UTF-8"); //to encode
URLDecoder.decode(myEncodedstring, "UTF-8"); //to decode

I know this is a very general solution and it might not be ideal for situation where user wants to view content of csv file, manually.