Question

I have a need to read a CSV file, and the only language I can use is VBscript.

I’m currently just opening the file and splitting on commas, and it’s working OK because there aren’t any quoted commas in fields. But I’m aware this is an incredibly fragile solution.

So, is there such a thing as a VBscript module I can use? Somewhere to get a tried-and-tested regular expression that would only split on commas not in quotes?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Answer 1

VBScript does not have a module system comparable to Perl. However you can open CSV files with ADO and access them like a database table. The code would go something like this:

(The funny comments are solely to fix SO’s broken VB syntax highlighting)

Dim conn    ''// As ADODB.Connection Dim rs      ''// As ADODB.RecordSet Dim connStr ''// As String Dim dataDir ''// As String  dataDir = 'C:\'                         '' connStr = 'Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=' & dataDir & ';Extended Properties=''text'''  Set conn = CreateObject('ADODB.Connection') conn.Open(connStr) Set rs = conn.Execute('SELECT * FROM [data.txt]')  ''// do something with the recordset WScript.Echo rs.Fields.Count & ' columns found.' WScript.Echo '---'  WScript.Echo rs.Fields('Col1Name').Value If Not rs.EOF Then   rs.MoveNext   WScript.Echo rs.Fields('Col3Name').Value End If  ''// explicitly closing stuff is somewhat optional ''// in this script, but consider it a good habit rs.Close conn.Close  Set rs = Nothing Set conn = Nothing 

Creating a schema.ini file that exactly describes your input is optimal. If you don’t, you force the text driver to guess, and all bets are off if it guesses the wrong thing. The schema.ini must reside in the same directory where your data is.

Mine looked like this:

[data.txt] Format=Delimited(;) DecimalSymbol=. ColNameHeader=True MaxScanRows=0 Col1=Col1Name Long Col2=Col2Name Long Col3=Col3Name Text Col4=Col4Name Text 

and with this data.txt:

a;b;c;d 1;2;'foo bar';'yadayada' 1;2;'sample data';'blah' 

I get this output:

C:\>cscript -nologo data.vbs 4 columns found. --- 1 sample data  C:\> 

Worth a read in this regard: Much ADO About Text Files off the MSDN.