Handling commas within quotes when exporting a CSV file C#4.Any suggestions

Question

Hi all I am reading a csv file and I have encounted a problem when there is a comma inside the field

It all works till I get a comma within a comma all the fields wi

Answer 1

Since 3rd party libraries are out, a few choices (there are probably others):

• write a quote-aware CSV reader yourself
• use ODBC - see the last page here

Answer 2

Use the TextFieldParser class.

The description on MSDN is:

Provides methods and properties for parsing structured text files.

It lives in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO namespace, so not third party nor open source.

It is a managed class, so you can simply add a reference, import the namespace and use.

Example usage:

using(var fileReader = New TextFieldParser("C:\ParserText.txt"))
{
    fileReader.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;
    fileReader.SetDelimiters(",");
    ...
}