FasterCSV grew out of my involvement in a discussion on the Ruby Core  
mailing list.  The heart of this new CSV parser is a single, hyper-
optimized Regular Expression from "Mastering Regular Expressions,  
Second Edition," further enhanced by myself.

This library would not exist if it weren't for Ara.T.Howard's  
tireless attempts to break it.  ;)
I'm very grateful for all the help and insight Ara gave that made a  
robust solution possible.  Thank you!

If you use this library, don't be shy with the feedback!  Tell me  
what's working and what's not:

ja...@grayproductions.net

What is FasterCSV?
------------------

(from the README)

FasterCSV is intended as a replacement to Ruby's standard CSV  
library.  It was designed to address concerns users of that library  
had and it has three primary goals:

1.  Be significantly faster than CSV while remaining a pure Ruby  
library.
     * There are unit tests ensuring this very thing.  (Thanks for  
the idea Rob!)
     * It really is faster.  I mean it:
         $ rake benchmark
         (in /Users/james/Documents/Ruby/faster_csv)
         time ruby -r csv -e 'CSV.foreach("test/test_data.csv") { |
row| }'

         real    0m25.758s
         user    0m25.652s
         sys     0m0.076s
         time ruby -r lib/faster_csv -e 'FasterCSV.foreach("test/
test_data.csv") { |row| }'

         real    0m2.902s
         user    0m2.866s
         sys     0m0.030s
2.  Use a smaller and easier to maintain code base.
     * I still want it to include all the CSV functionality you need  
though!
       (Do tell me if you find something missing.)
     * ...And nice shiny new features!
     * Again, it really is smaller:
         $ rake stats
         (in /Users/james/Documents/Ruby/faster_csv)
         +----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------
+-----+-------+
         | Name                 | Lines |   LOC | Classes | Methods |  
M/C | LOC/M |
         +----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------
+-----+-------+
         | FasterCSV            |   400 |   133 |       2 |      12  
|   6 |     9 |
         |   Units              |   439 |   334 |       5 |      23  
|   4 |    12 |
         +----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------
+-----+-------+
         | Total                |   839 |   467 |       7 |      35  
|   5 |    11 |
         +----------------------+-------+-------+---------+---------
+-----+-------+
           Code LOC: 133     Test LOC: 334     Code to Test Ratio: 1:2.5
3.  Improve on the CSV interface.
     * My opinion, of course.

Migrating from CSV to FasterCSV?
--------------------------------

The README includes a section on the differences and you can read  
that here:

http://fastercsv.rubyforge.org/

You call also see general usage in the documentation of the  
interface, right here:

http://fastercsv.rubyforge.org/classes/FasterCSV.html

If FasterCSV isn't meeting your needs, I want to here about it:

ja...@grayproductions.net

Coming soon!
------------

(from the TODO)

* Add support for accessing fields by headers (from first row of  
document).
   (I promise Ara, it's next on the list!)
* Add "convertors" for switching numbers to Integers or Floats, dates  
to Date or
   Time objects, etc.

Where can I learn more?
-----------------------

FasterCSV is hosted on RubyForge.

Project page:   http://rubyforge.org/projects/fastercsv/
Documentation:  http://fastercsv.rubyforge.org/
Downloads:      http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1102

How do I get FasterCSV?
-----------------------

FasterCSV is a gem, so as long as you have RubyGems installed it's as  
simple as:

$ sudo gem install fastercsv

If you need to install RubyGems, you can download it from:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126&release_id=2471

FasterCSV can also be installed manually.  Just download the latest  
release and follow the instructions in INSTALL:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1102&release_id=3545