Re: [dev] ASCII Delimited Text

From: Greg Reagle <greg.reagle_AT_umbc.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 23:16:34 -0400

On Wed, May 16, 2018, at 10:05, Adrian Grigore wrote:
> What do you guys think of this:
>
> https://ronaldduncan.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/text-file-formats-ascii-delimited-text-not-csv-or-tab-delimited-text/

Seems reasonable to me. For the purpose of transferring data between two different spreadsheet programs that cannot read each other's native formats, seems much better than using tabs or commas.

If I were doing editing of this text format directly, I'd want my editor/pager to have some tools to make it easier. Maybe display the Unit Separator as a special-color pipe and the Record Separator as a special-color newline and the Group Separator as a special-color double newline (i.e. blank line). And an easy way to type in these characters in the editor. For example, Unit Separator can be entered in Emacs as C-x 8 RET 1 f RET, so a better shortcut would be useful, e.g. C-| (control pipe).
Received on Thu May 17 2018 - 05:16:34 CEST

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