Thanks John,
You are totally correct - we have built tools that allow .xls and .xlsx 
file to be generated with external user defined formatting.
But in this case we have been advised by a third part they will ONLY 
accept the information in their specific format.
Also as you pointed out we need to know the data we are providing and yes 
we do.  The data is actually imported from a MSSQL server and we parse the 
data and guarantee no quotes, double quotes or imbedded commas.
I am adding a new option to the export definition that provides an option 
to additionally generate a csv file, for that matter I am providing two 
options so I can allow the user to dictate if double quotes are required 
around alphanumeric fields or not.
This way we can just build up a text string for each record as the excel 
file is produced with the appropriate csv delimiters and if the flag is 
set write the record to the ifs file.  Then both files are attached to the 
email and sent.
Would like to thank everyone that replied
Great group with awesome knowledge!!
Don Brown
 
From:   John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
To:     Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date:   17/11/2016 06:13 AM
Subject:        Re: Quoting text strings for SCV output
Sent by:        "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Kevin Adler <kadler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If you were to use Python, you could use the xlsxwriter package and 
build
an actual Excel file and not worry about CSV.
That's normally *my* pat response when I wedge Python into the 
conversation.
However, the OP was very specific about needing to output CSV, and
even then, a dialect of CSV that is NOT produced by Excel. He started
the thread by saying that he's already got POI stuff set up to
generate Excel files, and that it's not meeting his requirements for
this particular task.
John Y.
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