clyde.ingram@edl.uk.eds.com wrote:
But the same cannot be said of automated computer-based applications, where maintaining a strict count of generated and expected Comma-Separated-Values per record is not only easy, but also allows for an extra level of data validation: namely that a received record is corrupt if it has too few or too many fields. This is where standardisation in the format of the CSV records becomes appropriate material for an RFC.
The draft as it is written now (-03) does not mandate that the same number of fields need to appear on each line, mainly due to the fact that the draft is focusing on the MIME type registration. Would the following change to section 2, subsection 4 be sufficient to address your concerns: "Within the header and each record there may be one or more fields, separated by commas. Each line should contain the same number of fields throughout the file. The last field in the record may not be followed by a comma. For example:" Yakov