>Hi All
>
>I have a CSV file which uses comma as the primary delimiter between fields. However, some fields might contain a comma (e.g. a description field) and the supplier provides those fields enclosed in quotes. For example:
>
>AAA,BBB,"XXX YYY, ZZZ",CCC,"X1, Y1, Z1",DDD,
>
>I cannot do an import on this CSV file as it contains too many fields. I need to parse the file, line by line.
>
>How can I get each field so that the result would be:
>
>Field 1: AAA
>Field 2: BBB
>Field 3: XXX YYY, ZZZ
>Field 4: CCC
>Field 5: X1, Y1, Z1
>Field 6: DDD
>
>GETWORDNUM() works for fields separated with a comma but then it picks up individual sections in the description fields which are enclosed in quotes. I can write a manual parsing routine but was wondering if there was a faster way.

I tried to copy and paste a piece of code I use, but found that it's too involved with what I had in its history... So a brief description instead

c=filetostr("your.csv")
IF llUTF8   && a parameter passed, I'm not reading BOM because it's often missing.
	c=STRCONV(STRCONV(c,11),2)
ENDIF
lnRows=alines(this.aRows, c)

Now parse the first line into this.aFldNames (and check for any rubbish, as in repeated names, names in multiple lines etc etc, this array is your source of field names); keep the column count somewhere.
For rows 2 to lnRows, make a function like this

function getrow(ii)
lcRow=this.aRows[ii]
do while ["] $ lcRow
* now here do a strextract of anything between quotation marks, with end delimiters
* replace it back without quotes and with commas replaced with, say, pipes
	lcRow=strtran(lcRow, lcCut, lcReplace)
enddo
* now split into fields
lnCols=alines(aValues, lcRow, -1, -1, ",")
o=createobject("empty")
for ij=1 to lncols
	lcVal=chrtran( aValues[ij], "|", ",")
	addproperty(o, this.aFldNames[ij], lcVal)
endif
* lots of error handling needed here - lnCols may differ from the size of aFldNames etc etc.
return o