How do I use Super CSV on a delimited file that does not use a quote character?

Question

I'm using Super CSV to parse a pipe ("|") separated file. The file does not use "text qualifiers", or what Super CSV calls a quote character. The problem is that Super CSV requires a quote character. I don't see a way to skip this, or provide a null character. Currently I'm passing some wacky unicode character that hopefully never appears in the input file.

Is there a way to have Super CSV parse a file without using a quote character?

Answer 1

I'm guessing that you don't have control of how the file to parse is written, and that it will never contain embedded pipe characters in the data?

The solutions I can see are:

• Use a character that will never appear in your file (as you've suggested). This is a little dodgy, but will work.

• Supply your own Tokenizer when you construct your Reader (you can copy the Super CSV implementation and just remove the quoting functionality).

• Send us a feature request and we'll consider adding it. It may be simply a case of adding another preference which disables quoting when parsing.

I'll have a think about this, and see if I can think of the best way to achieve this.

Answer 2

Use the delimiter character as the quote character. Eg:

CsvPreference cp = new CsvPreference('|'/*quote char*/,'|'/*delimiter char*/, "\n");