Is there a way to fix this string output?

Question

I am reading data from a CSV file and putting the string into an array list called album . One of the string was: The Beatles ("The White Album") and the output when I print it using System.out.print(album.get(index)) was:

"The Beatles (""The White Album"")"

Why are there extra quotation marks at the front and last and at between?

I tried replacing the quotation of the string with \" so that it takes quotation as a string too but the output was:

\"The Beatles (\\"The White Album\\")\

Code I tried:

System.out.print(album.get(index).replace('"','\\"');

Answer 1

CSV separates values with commas:

value1,value2,value3

But what if the value itself contains a comma, like say value,3 ? No problem, says CSV, we'll put in in quotes:

value1,value2,"value,3"

So now the quotes are used to surround values with commas... what do we do if such a value itself contains a quote, like say, value "3" ? No problem, says CSV, we'll replace the quote with a double quote:

value1,value2,"value ""3"""

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In your case, what you probably want to do is this:

• If the string you read doesn't start with " , use it as is.
• If it does start with " :
  • substring it to cut the first and last characters - str.substring(1, str.length() - 1)
  • replace all occurrences of "" with "