> Don't use broken tools.
Tell that to your accounting and finance department and let us know how the message is received.
> If you're forced to use Excel, then it's not really you in control, is it?
In which case the up-thread's advice to "just produce strict RFC 4180-compliant CSV data" is worthless. "Just."
We're stuck with whatever CSVs we get, so 'just' doing X is not an option.
> And *if you are in control of producing data*, just produce strict RFC 4180-compliant CSV data
The point of the comment was that you likely aren’t in control of producing the data, so the article’s recommendation of using an entirely different format is likely also invalid. I’m not sure what you are arguing against as you seem to actually agree with them.
Obviously that wouldn't work for CSVs with different structures, but can be effective in the workplace in certain scenarios.
However, if you ever have the misfortune of dealing with human generated files (particularly Excels) then you will suffer much pain and loss.
I once had to deal with a "CSV" which had not one, not two but 6(!) distinct date formats in the same file. Life as a data scientist kinda sucks sometimes :shrug:.