Reputation: 12283

CSV row split into string array question

How would you split this row to a string array?

the problem is Rutois, a.s. , so you cannot directly split with ',' separator..

543472,"36743721","Rutois, a.s.","151","some name","01341",55,"112",1

thanks

Upvotes: 1

Answers (6)

Ryan Loggerythm

Reputation: 3314

The other RegEx answer will fail if the first character is a quote.

This is the correct regular expression:

string[] columns = Regex.Split(inputRow, ",(?=(?:[^\"]*\"[^\"]*\")*(?![^\"]*\"))");

Upvotes: 0

user427261

Reputation: 11

I'd be tempted to swap out the quotes that occur inside the quoted strings and then use split. this would work.

        string csv = "543472,\"36743721\",\"Rutois, a.s.\",\"151\",\"some name\",\"01341\",55,\"112\",1"; 


        const string COMMA_TOKEN = "[COMMA]";
        string[] values;
        bool inQuotes = false;

        StringBuilder cleanedCsv = new StringBuilder();
        foreach (char c in csv)
        {
            if (c == '\"')
                inQuotes = !inQuotes;  //work out if inside a quoted string or not
            else
            {
                //Replace commas in quotes with a token
                if (inQuotes && c == ',')
                    cleanedCsv.Append(COMMA_TOKEN);
                else
                    cleanedCsv.Append(c);
            }
        }

        values = cleanedCsv.ToString().Split(',');

        //Put the commas back
        for (int i = 0; i < values.Length; i++)
            values[i] = values[i].Replace(COMMA_TOKEN, ",");

Upvotes: 1

Guffa

Reputation: 700252

You can use a regular expression to pick out the values from the line:

string line ="543472,\"36743721\",\"Rutois, a.s.\",\"151\",\"some name\",\"01341\",55,\"112\",1";
var values = Regex.Matches(line, "(?:\"(?<m>[^\"]*)\")|(?<m>[^,]+)");
foreach (Match value in values) {
  Console.WriteLine(value.Groups["m"].Value);
}

Output:

543472
36743721
Rutois, a.s.
151
some name
01341
55
112
1

This of course assumes that you actually have got the complete CSV record in the string. Note that values in a CSV record can contain line breaks, so getting the records from a CSV file can not be done by simply splitting it on line breaks.

Upvotes: 6

Ash Burlaczenko

Reputation: 25435

I'm guess you want something like this -

string csv = 543472,"36743721","Rutois, a.s.","151","some name","01341",55,"112",1 ;
string[] values;
values = csv.Split(",");
for(int i = 0; i<values.Length; i++)
{
    values[i] = values[i].Replace("\"", "");
}

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 0