How should I read and parse (real, proper, full-featured) CSVs in C++?

Question

I've read:

How can I read and parse CSV files in C++?

but the title there is rather misleading. It's not asking about reading CSVs per se, just multi-line comma-delimited no-escaped-data files.

Now, I want to parse actual CSVs - the proper format (RFC 4180-compliant) - with quoted fields and with line breaks, commas and double-quotes within quoted fields; and with at least the option of expecting CRLF as a record delimiter rather than LF.

To be more specific: Can I extend the boost-tokenizer-based suggestions from the simpler version of the question to handle quoting (and the other issues) properly?

Wasn't that [answered](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1122720/1413395) in that question you mention as well? — πάντα ῥεῖ, Apr 13 '16 at 17:26
... and if not, parsing CSV files does not appear to be rocket science. If the existing libraries don't handle it fully to your satisfaction, then writing a CSV parser should take half a day, at a most. — Sam Varshavchik, Apr 13 '16 at 17:27
@RichardHodges and you can just scan my answers for at least 3 different takes on it, with various degrees of feature completeness (including _ridiculously complete_) — sehe, Apr 13 '16 at 18:07

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 13 '16 at 18:39

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I'd strongly consider using a preexisting library. The first one I found on google that looked reasonable was librfc4180csv.

answered Apr 13 '16 at 18:39

David D

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Can you see something about its merits? I assume it does conform to RFC 4180, but - is it reasonably speedy? It's not very standard-library-like from the looks of it. Also, does it not require the 'ragel' tool? – einpoklum Apr 13 '16 at 21:13

How should I read and parse (real, proper, full-featured) CSVs in C++?

1 Answers1