Language C: Extracting fields into a CSV file

Xeratul · 01-18-2013, 05:10 PM

Hello,

A CSV file is a plain text file originally from Excel, notepad, that has some records.

The fields are separated by ";".

With a conventional C language (for gcc compiler), how would you separate the fields while reading a given data.csv file?

I am looking forward to hearing you.

Many thanks

dwhitney67 · 01-18-2013, 05:47 PM

1. Open the CSV file (and verify such)

2. Use fgets() to read each line (one by one)

3. For each line read, use strtok() to separate the fields.

If you desire additional help, please post some code demonstrating that you have, at a minimum, followed my advice above.

theNbomr · 01-21-2013, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xeratul

Hello,

A CSV file is a plain text file originally from Excel, notepad, that has some records.

The fields are separated by ";".

Technically, CSV files are Comma Separated Value files, so they use commas as delimiters. A robust CSV parser may use strtok() internally, but is likely to include a great deal more complexity than that. Dealing with embedded delimiters basically means inspecting, character by character, each byte in the file. Some 'CSV' files are not well-formed. How would you intend to deal with those?
I suggest first looking for a library that provides a working CSV parser API.

--- rod.

evgenyz · 01-22-2013, 10:13 AM

I wrote some CSV parser in C long time ago..
If I will find some souce files I will send them to you.