use Perl

• Feedback (Score:1)

  by Aristotle (5147)

  1. No contest: column_names.

  2. Definitely no rewinding magic. In fact, I wouldn’t even include a column_names_from_line sugar method, because all it does is save five keystrokes on a rare operation for the price of concealing how that works. And that’s the only reason users might forget about having to call that method first thing.

     If you just tell them that they need to set up the column names manually (and here’s an easy way to take them from the first line of the file), then it’s p
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by markjugg (792)

    Thanks for the feedback. I'll lean towards not proposing the sugar method for the reasons you give.
• column_names (Score:1)

  by Lecar_red (5694)

  I agree that column_names is a much better than the other.
• column_names gets my vote! (Score:1)

  by jj (2990)

  But have you seen the interface that Text::xSV [cpan.org] uses?

    use Text::xSV;
    my $csv = new Text::xSV;
    $csv->open_file("foo.csv");
    $csv->read_header();
  
    while (my $data = $csv->fetchrow_hash) {
      # do stuff...
    }

  Personally I quite like the read_header() function.
  • Re: Text::xSV (Score:1)

    by markjugg (792)

    That is a nice interface. If I had found that first I might have just used that instead.
    
    I think because it doesn't have "CSV" in the module name, distribution name or description, it's difficult to find by searching by on CPAN. At least it was for me.
    
    I did not that it is not an "XS" module, so would be slower than Text::CSV_XS.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Ron Savage (5224)

    I used a hashref attribute called column_names in:
    http://search.cpan.org/~rsavage/Text-CSV_PP-Iterator-1.00/ [cpan.org]
    which also discusses various similar modules.
• column_names it is ... (Score:1)

  by merijn (853)

  OK, column_names () it is.

  I liked the idea of hr_** for its double meaning: Hash Ref and Header Row, but that might be professional brain deformation from my side.

  While I was designing this, I also had DBI in mind, and the obvious next step to try is bind_columns ().

  With the new column_names (), it would be nice to do a DBI like bind_keys () so fields are stored in the same scalar over and over again, instead of creating a new scalar on parsing for every field line after line again.

  This *could* mean

  --
  Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn
• Tie::Handle::CSV (Score:1)

  by danboo (2604)

  This is offered as an example of how I did something similarly. In Tie::Handle::CSV [cpan.org] I just overloaded 'header' in the constructor. It can be a simple boolean to indicate whether the file has a header, or an array ref to assign the header.
• Done, plus Bind_columns. Go fetch 0.40 (Score:1)

  by merijn (853)

  You've now got it, and I also give you bind_columns!

  I value feedback, and probably some improvements on the docs, like adding the new stuff to the SYNOPSIS

    file: $CPAN/authors/id/H/HM/HMBRAND/Text-CSV_XS-0.40.tgz
    size: 85057 bytes
     md5: cb8b2af20925b832159f34eed9793666
  
  2008-04-07  0.40 - H.Merijn Brand   <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
  
          * Implemented getline_hr () and column_names () RT 34474
            (suggestions accep

  --
  Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn