2024-03-17 16:35:59 +00:00
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# A Spec-compliant CSV Parser in 17 lines of python
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Just an exercise I did for fun. I wanted to see how practical it was to construct a
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spec-compliant CSV parser in python using parser combinators. Turns out, it's not that
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hard!
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My end result was about 17 lines (two helper functions, two atomic parsers, seven
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combinators, and six parsers). Admittedly, there's a couple ugly lines. In particular,
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in the definition of the regex parser, I used lambda expressions as let expressions rather
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than employ a multi-line function definition, which looks a little sloppy. Still, I'm
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pretty happy with the result, especially given that conciseness was an explicit goal.
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If you want to take a look, find the file in [`csv_parse.py`](./csv_parse.py) or try
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2024-03-17 16:40:49 +00:00
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cloning and running it. I also put together another version which doesn't use python's
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regex module, which you can find in [`csv_parse_no_regex.py`](./csv_parse_no_regex.py).
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The sample data in this repository is stolen from [this handy repo of sample CSV
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files](https://github.com/datablist/sample-csv-files).
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2024-03-17 16:35:59 +00:00
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It's worth noting that this was built purely as an exercise. While it is spec compliant
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and can theoretically actually be used, I would recommend using Python's built-in CSV
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parser, or just splitting on commas if you can get away with it. Please don't try to use
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this as a library.
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