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Report From: Delphi-BCB/VCL/Core VCL Classes [ Add a report in this area ]

Report #: 2886

Status: Closed

CommaText considers space to be a delimiter too

Project: Delphi

Build #: 7.0.4.453

Version: 7.0

Submitted By: Rod Rishworth

Report Type: Basic functionality failure

Date Reported: 11/11/2002 5:34:24 AM

Severity: Infrequently encountered problem

Last Updated: 3/20/2012 2:24:39 AM

Platform: All versions

Internal Tracking #: 156894

Resolution: As Designed (Resolution Comments)

Resolved in Build: : 7.0.8.1

Duplicate of: None

Voting and Rating

Overall Rating: (14 Total Ratings)

4.36 out of 5

Total Votes: None

Description

Line 4452 of D7 Classes (SetDelimitedText) reads:

while (P^ > ' ') and (P^ <> Delimiter) do

This should be >= instead (also at a few other points, space is included)

That the control characters split the line OK, but a quote should only be required when there is a risk of a comma in the string.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open Excel
2. Set cell A1: Borland Delphi
3. Set cell B1: 7
4. Save as 'C:\CSV.CSV'
5. Close Excel (btw, Excel is just an example)
6. CSV.CSV has one line: Borland Delphi,7 - note no quotes, but clearly two fields
7. Open Delphi, run the following code:

var
  CSV: TStringList;
  Line: TStringList;
begin
  CSV := TStringList.Create;
  Line := TStringList.Create;
  CSV.LoadFromFile('C:\CSV.CSV');
  Line.CommaText := CSV[0];

8. Observe that Line.Count = 3 and Line[1] = 'Delphi', not '7' as hoped.

Workarounds

None

Attachment

None

Comments

Stefan Hoffmeister at 11/11/2002 9:35:51 AM -

The CSV file is not attached.

wayne hubbard at 11/18/2002 3:13:44 AM -

omg, he *tells* you how to make it
does bor(g)land want *everything* on a silver platter???

Robert Cram at 3/6/2003 11:50:05 PM -

Although I agree that it's a pain, it's probably as designed. The helpfile states:

Note: CommaText is the same as the DelimitedText property when Delimiter is ',' and QuoteChar is '"'.

Spaces and commas that are not contained within double quote marks are delimiters. Two commas next to each other will indicate an empty string, but spaces that appear next to another delimiter are ignored. For example, suppose CommaText is set to:

"Stri,ng 1", "Stri""ng 2" , String 3,String4

The list will then contain:

Stri,ng 1
Stri"ng 2
String
3
String4

Kevin Davidson at 3/25/2003 9:05:49 AM -

The described behavior is exactly what the help file says it should do:

"When assigning CommaText, the value is parsed as SDF formatted text. For SDF format, strings are separated by commas OR SPACES".

This is not a bug.

Nick Hodges at 6/21/2007 10:00:04 PM -

I use these two little functions to get around this:

function DoubleQuotedString(aString: AnsiString): AnsiString;
begin
Result := Format('"%s"', [aString]);
end;

function ProcessPath(aPath: AnsiString; aDelimiter: AnsiChar): AnsiString;
begin
Result := DoubleQuotedString(StringReplace(aPath, aDelimiter, DoubleQuotedString(aDelimiter), [rfReplaceAll]));
end;

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