CSV Support for Characters Other than Commas?

Hi,

thanks for your question.

By default, the import process will automatically recognize the most probable CSV delimiter character, where the semicolon ;, the comma , and the tab are preferred.

Regards,
Tobias

I had no idea that it automatically picked the most probable delimiter. Maybe just a small label or something would note that and prevent confusion? Something like what you just said: “CSV import will automatically recognize the most probable delimiter character, where the semicolon, the comma, and the tab are preferred.”

Hi,

hhm, I’m not really sure that this is really necessary… The average plugin user probably doesn’t even really know what a CSV delimiter is, and he most likely doesn’t care.
I’ll need to think about it some more.

Meanwhile, is the CSV import working for you?

Regards,
Tobias

The feature exists in the plugin, which means some users would be expected to use it. Of those who are going to use it, some will be like me being unaware that the Comma Separated Value import works for delimiters other than commas.

Other CSV importers I’ve seen include a field to manually input a custom delimiter or radio buttons to select between common delimiters. This has neither. I’ve also seen CSV importers that only work with commas. The way it is right now, the user has no way of knowing if this CSV importer supports other delimiters or not until you actually try it. Having it automatically import works, but a small note next to the dropdown menu (perhaps it only appears when that value is selected) would eliminate the confusion.

Now that I know it supports other characters, I just tried it with a tab-delimited file and it does work as advertised.

Hi,

hhm, ok, I see your point.

In WP-Table Reloaded, I used to have a radio button solution, where the user could choose the delimiter. This however also lead to a lot of trouble, because people just didn’t know what the delimiter was. Then they’d have to open the CSV file in a text editor to find out, which is even another step to confuse people. So, that’s definitely not coming back, but a short note about the automatic detection sounds reasonable, indeed.
(By the way, TablePress actually uses “Character-separated Values” as the long form of CSV.)

So, thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
And great to hear that automatic detection worked ??

Best wishes,
Tobias

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