this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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My bank started using Quickbooks file format if I want to download a transaction history in a specific date range, what a fucking nightmare. It's not abandoned yet but nothing except the QuickBooks proprietary software seems to open them so far, only a matter of time. Honestly at this point I might prefer the nightmarish CSV filetype.
CSV isn't nightmarish, it is just a table structure in text form. You can open it with any text editor.
The problem is that it's not really a standard. It's reinvented ad-hoc by whomever programs it today.
Should there be any whitespace after the comma? Do you want to use pipes or some other character instead of commas (ASCII 0x1E is sitting over there for exactly this purpose, but it's been ignored for decades)? How do you handle escaping your separator char inside the dataset? Are you [CR] or [LF} or [CR] [LF]? None of these questions have a set answer. Even JSON has more specification than this.
Csv are easy to open in any spreadsheet software. You can even copy/paste it straight into some of them, e.g. LibreOffice Calc
Beware opening CSV in Excel. You will lose all your leading zeroes, among other "helpful" edits. Sometimes the leading zeroes are there for a reason!
Newest update to excel asks before applying default formatting and type conversion just as an FYI.
OH BOY I LOVE OPENING A DATA DOCUMENT AND SPENDING THE NEXT HALF HOUR FORMATTING IT MYSELF, TYSM