Question

I have a csv file which looks like this

$lines[0] = "text, with commas", "another text", 123, "text",5;
$lines[1] = "some without commas", "another text", 123, "text";
$lines[2] = "some text with commas or no",, 123, "text";

And I would like to have a table:

$t[0] = array("text, with commas", "another text", "123", "text","5");
$t[1] = array("some without commas", "another text", "123", "text");
$t[2] = array("some text, with comma,s or no", NULL , "123", "text");

If I use split($lines[0],",") I’ll get "text" ,"with commas" ...
Is there any elegant way to do it?

Answer 1

You can use fgetcsv to parse a CSV file without having to worry about parsing it yourself.

Example from PHP Manual:

$row = 1;
if (($handle = fopen("test.csv", "r")) !== FALSE) {
    while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== FALSE) {
        $num = count($data);
        echo "<p> $num fields in line $row: <br /></p>\n";
        $row++;
        for ($c=0; $c < $num; $c++) {
            echo $data[$c] . "<br />\n";
        }
    }
    fclose($handle);
}