How should I escape commas and speech marks in CSV files so they work in Excel?

Question

I\'m generating a CSV file (delimited by commas rather than tabs). My users will most likely open the CSV file in Excel by double clicking it. My data may contain commas and

Answer 1

According to Yashu's instructions, I wrote the following function (it's PL/SQL code, but it should be easily adaptable to any other language).

FUNCTION field(str IN VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
    C_NEWLINE CONSTANT CHAR(1) := '
'; -- newline is intentional

    v_aux VARCHAR2(32000);
    v_has_double_quotes BOOLEAN;
    v_has_comma BOOLEAN;
    v_has_newline BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
    v_has_double_quotes := instr(str, '"') > 0;
    v_has_comma := instr(str,',') > 0;
    v_has_newline := instr(str, C_NEWLINE) > 0;

    IF v_has_double_quotes OR v_has_comma OR v_has_newline THEN
        IF v_has_double_quotes THEN
            v_aux := replace(str,'"','""');
        ELSE
            v_aux := str;
        END IF;
        return '"'||v_aux||'"';
    ELSE
        return str;
    END IF;
END;