Excel Comma Separated Values (CSV) - com.Ostermiller.util Java Utilities

// Create the printer
ExcelCSVPrinter ecsvp = new ExcelCSVPrinter(
    System.out
);

// Write to the printer
ecsvp.writeln(
    new String[]{
        "hello","world"
    }
);

Writing Excel CSV files: ExcelCSVPrinter

This class makes it easy to output Excel CSV. Given values, it will automatically determine if they need to be quoted and escape special characters. Comments can easily be written and correct line beginnings will be added.

To write standard CSV files that some applications other than Excel can understand use the standard CSV format. Both CSVPrinter and ExcelCSVPrinter implement the CSVPrint interface.

// Parse the data
String[][] values = ExcelCSVParser.parse(
    new StringReader(
        "hello,world\n" +
        "how,are,you"
    )
);

// Display the parsed data
for (int i=0; i<values.length; i++){
    for (int j=0; j<values[i].length; j++){
        System.out.println(values[i][j]);
    }
    System.out.println("-----");
}

Reading Excel CSV files: ExcelCSVParser

Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet has on option to export to comma separated value format. However it fails to use the standard CSV file format. Excel does not use the backslash as an escape character, but instead escapes quote literals with two quotes. It also does not quote values that have leading or trailing whitespace. This special CSV parser can read Excel format CSV files. Excel CSV has become a defacto standard of its own. It is now specified by RFC4180.

To read standard CSV files that some applications other than Excel can understand use the standard CSV format. Both CSVParser and ExcelCSVParser implement the CSVParse interface.

If the first line of your CSV file is a row of column headings, consider wrapping this parser in a Labeled CSV Parser.