[erlang-questions] CSV file help

[Lucky Khoza]

Hi Erlang Developers,

Where do i start in terms of reading CSV file, because i tried to use this rountines:

{ok,String} = file:open("produce.csv",read).
io:get_line(String, ' ').

but when i used this rountine: io:get_line(String,' ') to read each line i got this tuple: {error,terminated},

And the file i'm trying to read is like this:

"Supplier ID","Product Code","Product Description","Delivery Date","Unit Price","Number of Units"
15,1101,"Apples 1kg Golden Delicious. The sweetest Apples! Always a favourite. Love, Mrs. Hollingberry","2012/02/15",1505,5

Thanks in advance for your help.

Kindest Regards
Lucky

[Bengt Kleberg]

Greetings,

The documentation page for io:file/2 says that the second argument
should be a list of atoms. Like this: [read].
If {ok, String} matches, then you are probably just lucky.


bengt

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[Michael Uvarov]

Hi,

There are few libraries for CSV parsing.
I wrote this one. https://github.com/arcusfelis/csv_parser

--
Best regards,
Uvarov Michael

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Nov 12, 2012, at 8:54 AM, Lucky Khoza <mrk...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Erlang Developers,
>
> Where do i start in terms of reading CSV file, because i tried to use this rountines:
>
> {ok,String} = file:open("produce.csv",read).
> io:get_line(String, ' ').

There are two problems here:

first, file:open/2 should be called appropriately and Bengt writes. Second, the binding {ok, String} should rather be {ok, IoDevice} in order to be more precise. The IO device needs to be used to read out data from the file in question. Look at the call file:read_line/2.

The io:get_line/2 call is probably ok, but I would prefer file:read_line/2 since it does not have to be given a prompt. Speaking of prompt, the value '' is not a string but an (empty) atom. In Erlang, you can't interchange ' and " like many other languages (almost) allows you to.

The {error, terminated} is probably because your IoDevice was not opened correctly and thus the call fails.

Jesper Louis Andersen
Erlang Solutions Ltd., Copenhagen