Re: FTP Format

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

As Jim said, there can be many different ways to generate a so-called 
CSV format - many which do not even include a comma, the "C" of CSV.

But I think, John, that you should look again at CPYFRMIMPF - yes, there 
have been problems; yes, it doesn't handle everything, but what does 
when it's a general-purpose command? The several parameters on the 
command that do not appear at first give you a lot of control. You get 
to set the various delimiters.

I think throwing it out of your armory completely leaves you without a 
tool that is useful 90% of the time, and you know ways to handle the 
others. Besides, you always need to negotiate with the providers of 
delimited files, to see what they've done with the options.

So we make our choices of what to use - you may have a lock-down method 
that has no problems with delimited files - I hope so - and if you do, 
maybe you'll share it on the midrange code archive?

Of course, I don't completely trust Microsoft - with Excel, especially, 
they try to "help" me far too much.

Regards
Vern

On 11/16/2011 12:13 AM, John Yeung wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 12:08 AM, Jim Franz<franz400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
> > btw - we need to stop thinking csv is an "Excel" format
> > (not you John, but earlier thread). It existed long before
> > Excel, and btw it is one of many formats Excel can output.
> > The format pre-dates PC's!
> I'm glad you don't count me as someone who conflates Excel and CSV,
> and I agree it's a little disappointing when people do.  Especially
> since a CSV generated by something other than Excel will usually
> behave very differently than a CSV generated by Excel (unless
> specifically designed to mimic Excel).