Question

Hi all
I am reading a csv file and I have encounted a problem when there is a comma inside the field

It all works till I get a comma within a comma
all the fields will have “” around it.

             string delimiter=",";
         using (var sr = new StreamReader(fileName))
        {
                sr.ReadLine(); //skip headers
                while (!sr.EndOfStream)
                {
                   var readline = sr.ReadLine();
                   if (readline == null) continue;
                   var fields = readline.Split  (delimiter.ToCharArray());  
                 }
            }if I CANNOT split because of commas within quotation . How can I recode it?

I cannot use open source or thirdy party libraries.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Use the TextFieldParser class.

The description on MSDN is:

Provides methods and properties for parsing structured text files.

It lives in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace, so not third party nor open source.

It is a managed class, so you can simply add a reference, import the namespace and use.

Example usage:

using(var fileReader = New TextFieldParser("C:\ParserText.txt"))
{
    fileReader.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;
    fileReader.SetDelimiters(",");
    ...
}