[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #50224] csv2cell() returns error when linefeed(s) are present in text fields

[Philip Nienhuis]

Update of bug #50224 (project octave):

                Severity:              3 - Normal => 2 - Minor              
                  Status:                    None => Postponed              
                 Release:                   4.0.0 => other                  
        Operating System:               GNU/Linux => Any                    
                 Summary: csv2cell() returns error when linefeed(s) are
present in spreadsheet cells => csv2cell() returns error when linefeed(s) are
present in text fields

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Follow-up Comment #1:

I'm afraid this isn't gonna be solved soon :-(

csv2cell() invokes fgetl() to scan the file for nr. of lines, and fgetl()
doesn't care where it finds a newline, it just assumes it to be a "real" EOL
whether it's in a protected (by double quotes) cell or not.
In general it is very hard for lower level code to assess whether a newline
means EOL in the file context or is just part of some user text string. Tying
to solve that leads without exception to very messy and hard-to-maintain
code.

All I'll do for the moment is adding a note in the texinfo help text that the
(AFAIK) only non-printable character that cannot be in text cells is "\n".
I am sorry for this probably unsatisfactory solution :-)

A workaround is to turn the .csv into a spreadsheet file and read that using
xls/odsread and friends. 
Admittedly you'd need to either wait until the next io release, or download
the io dev code from the repo yourself and turn it into a package that you can
install.

Setting status to "Postponed" and lowering priority.


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