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

The simplest solution I've found is the one LibreOffice uses:

1. Replace all literal " by ”
2. Put double quotes around your string

You can also use the one that Excel uses:

1. Replace all literal " by ""
2. Put double quotes around your string

Notice other people recommended to do only step 2 above, but that doesn't work with lines where a " is followed by a ,, like in a CSV where you want to have a single column with the string hello",world, as the CSV would read:

"hello",world"

Which is interpreted as a row with two columns: hello and world"