How to determine the delimiter in CSV file

Question

I have a scenario at which i have to parse CSV files from different sources, the parsing code is very simple and straightforward.

        String csvFile = \         


        

Answer 1

That depends....

If your datasets are always the same length and/or the separator NEVER occurs in your datacolumns, you could just read the first line of the file, look at it for the longed for separator, set it and then read the rest of the file using that separator.

Something like

String csvFile = "/Users/csv/country.csv";
String line = "";
String cvsSplitBy = ",";
try (BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(csvFile))) {
    while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        // use comma as separator
        if (line.contains(",")) {
            cvsSplitBy = ",";
        } else if (line.contains(";")) {
           cvsSplitBy = ";";
        } else {
            System.out.println("Wrong separator!");
        }
        String[] country = line.split(cvsSplitBy);
        System.out.println("Country [code= " + country[4] + " , name=" + country[5] + "]");
    }
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Greetz Kai