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The best description of dates and CSV files I've heard by far. Bravo.

"Csv files are a little bit like like dates: superficially simple, with lots of corner cases. Largely for the same reason: lack of standardization."

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I just attempted to run some government data through Python using the csv module. It worked like a charm, until it told me that a field had exceeded the maximum allowable length. A close look showed that a field began but did not end with a quotation mark. Using the csv.QUOTE_NONE flag resolved that, but did not remedy such quirks as short or long records.

CSV files, depending on who generates them, are a bit like dates if the status of a year as leap or not depended on whether the date of Easter were 0 mod 4.

My gripe with the Python csv.reader module is that it has no skip_lines parameter. Ill-formatted lines at the top/bottom of a CSV file are quite common

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