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submitted 2 years ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

My bank started using Quickbooks file format if I want to download a transaction history in a specific date range, what a fucking nightmare. It's not abandoned yet but nothing except the QuickBooks proprietary software seems to open them so far, only a matter of time. Honestly at this point I might prefer the nightmarish CSV filetype.

[-] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 33 points 2 years ago

CSV isn't nightmarish, it is just a table structure in text form. You can open it with any text editor.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The problem is that it's not really a standard. It's reinvented ad-hoc by whomever programs it today.

Should there be any whitespace after the comma? Do you want to use pipes or some other character instead of commas (ASCII 0x1E is sitting over there for exactly this purpose, but it's been ignored for decades)? How do you handle escaping your separator char inside the dataset? Are you [CR] or [LF} or [CR] [LF]? None of these questions have a set answer. Even JSON has more specification than this.

[-] Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 years ago

Csv are easy to open in any spreadsheet software. You can even copy/paste it straight into some of them, e.g. LibreOffice Calc

[-] Stretch2m@lemm.ee 19 points 2 years ago

Beware opening CSV in Excel. You will lose all your leading zeroes, among other "helpful" edits. Sometimes the leading zeroes are there for a reason!

[-] hangonasecond@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

Newest update to excel asks before applying default formatting and type conversion just as an FYI.

[-] doctorcrimson@lemmy.today 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

OH BOY I LOVE OPENING A DATA DOCUMENT AND SPENDING THE NEXT HALF HOUR FORMATTING IT MYSELF, TYSM

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023

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