Strings and Things - Java - page 112

Solution

Use my CSV class or a regular expression (see Chapter 4 ).

Discussion

CSV is deceptive. It looks simple at first glance, but the values may be quoted or unquoted.
If quoted, they may further contain escaped quotes. This far exceeds the capabilities of the
StringTokenizer class (see Breaking Strings Into Words ). Either considerable Java coding
or the use of regular expressions is required. I'll show both ways.

First, a Java program. Assume for now that we have a class called CSV that has a no-argu-
ment constructor and a method called parse() that takes a string representing one line of the
input file. The parse() method returns a list of fields. For flexibility, the fields are returned
as a List , which you can process in any way you like:

CSVSimple.java

package package com . darwinsys . csv ;

import import java.util.List java.util.List ;

/* Simple demo of CSV parser class. */
public

public class class CSVSimple CSVSimple {

public public static void main ( String [] args ) {

CSVImport parser = new

static void

new CSVImport ();
List < String > list = parser . parse (
"\"LU\",86.25,\"11/4/1998\",\"2:19PM\",+4.0625" );

for for ( String word : list ) {

System . out . println ( word );

}

// Now try with a non-default separator
parser = new

new CSVImport ( '|' );
list = parser . parse (
"\"LU\"|86.25|\"11/4/1998\"|\"2:19PM\"|+4.0625" );

for for ( String word : list ) {

System . out . println ( word );

}

}

}