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Comment by UnoriginalGuy | Hacker News Reader

Where did that = sign come from? That isn't in the standard... Quotes are, but wtf? An equals sign? Fucking Excel.

JUST TREAT THE NUMBERS LIKE TEXT YOU STUPID PROGRAM.

000001 === 000001 != 1

It uses another auto trick: if the leading character is '=', the result is treated as a formula.

Thus, you can actually write formulas in your CSV and excel will interpret appropriately:

    $ cat test.csv
    =1+1,="1-5"
    $ open -a Microsoft\ Excel test.csv

You should see the value '2' (with content `=1+1`)

If you start using metacharacters, it's no longer a universal .csv, but an excel-specific one.