| Progress report |
Design
The CSV import filter uses a hand-made state machine to parse the CSV file.
This allows to handle quoted fields (such as those containing the CSV delimiter),
as well as the double-quote character itself (which then appears twice, and
always in a quoted field).
Just to make sure about the vocabulary, I call a quoted field a field
starting with " and finishing with ".
Let's try to draw the graph of the state machine using ascii-art.
DEL or EOL
/--\
| |
| v "
/--[START]-------->[QUOTED_FIELD] (**)
other| ^ ^ | ^
(*) | | | DEL or | " | " (*)
| | | EOL v | other
| | \----[MAYBE_END_OF_QUOTED_FIELD]--------> Error
| |
| | DEL or
| | EOL
v |
[NORMAL_FIELD] (**)
DEL : CSV delimiter (depends on locale !). Often comma, sometimes semicolon.
EOL : End Of Line.
(*) : added to the current field
(**) : implicit loop on itself, labeled "other (*)"
Ugly isn't it ? :) One can't be good in drawings AND in hacking :)
That's all. For the rest, see csvfilter.cc
David Faure <faure@kde.org>, 1999
|