Question

I have a CSV file that contains several lines like this one :

"bar","foo, bar","18","07/09/2012 02:08:16","payments, recent","payments, all"

Some values ​​contain commas, and I need to remove these commas in order to obtain this result :

"bar","foo bar","18","07/09/2012 02:08:16","payments recent","payments all"

I started with this regex "^(\".+\"\\,?)+$" but it becomes too much complicated for me.

---

The final goal is to split that string :

string content = reader.ReadToEnd();

string[] lignes = contenu.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);

for (int i = 1; i < lignes.Length; i++)
{
    // REMOVE COMMAS

    string[] values = csv.Split(new[] {','});

    // do something
}

reader.Close();

Thanks.

Answer 1

Instead of hand parsing your valid CSV file (commas are allowed within quoted fields), you should be using a CSV parser that knows how to handle these.

A popular library is FileHelpers and there is the TextFieldParser in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace.