Find a delimiter of csv or text files in c# - c#

I want to find a delimiter being used to separate the columns in csv or text files.
I am using TextFieldParser class to read those files.
Below is my code,
String path = #"c:\abc.csv";
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
if (File.Exists(path))
{
using (Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser parser = new Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser(path))
{
parser.TextFieldType = FieldType.Delimited;
if (path.Contains(".txt"))
{
parser.SetDelimiters("|");
}
else
{
parser.SetDelimiters(",");
}
parser.HasFieldsEnclosedInQuotes = true;
bool firstLine = true;
while (!parser.EndOfData)
{
string[] fields = parser.ReadFields();
if (firstLine)
{
foreach (var val in fields)
{
dt.Columns.Add(val);
}
firstLine = false;
continue;
}
dt.Rows.Add(fields);
}
}
lblCount.Text = "Count of total rows in the file: " + dt.Rows.Count.ToString();
dgvTextFieldParser1.DataSource = dt;
Instead of passing the delimiters manually based on the file type, I want to read the delimiter from the file and then pass it.
How can I do that?


Mathematically correct but totally useless answer: It's not possible.
Pragmatical answer: It's possible but it depends on how much you know about the file's structure. It boils down to a bunch of assumptions and depending on which we'll make, the answer will vary. And if you can't make any assumptions, well... see the mathematically correct answer.
For instance, can we assume that the delimiter is one or any of the elements in the set below?
List<char> delimiters = new List<char>{' ', ';', '|'};
Or can we assume that the delimiter is such that it produces elements of equal length?
Should we try to find a delimiter that's a single character or can a word be one?
Etc.
Based on the question, I'll assume that it's the first option and that we have a limited set of possible characters, precisely one of which is be a delimiter for a given file.
How about you count the number of occurrences of each such character and assume that the one that's occurring most frequently is the one? Is that sufficiently rigid or do you need to be more sure than that?
List<char> delimiters = new List<char>{' ', ';', '-'};
Dictionary<char, int> counts = delimiters.ToDictionary(key => key, value => 0);
foreach(char c in delimiters)
counts[c] = textArray.Count(t => t == c);
I'm not in front of a computer so I can't verify but the last step would be returning the key from the dictionary the value of which is the maximal.
You'll need to take into consideration a special case such that there's no delimiters detected, there are equally many delimiters of two types etc.


Very simple guessing approach using LINQ:
static class CsvSeperatorDetector
{
private static readonly char[] SeparatorChars = {';', '|', '\t', ','};
public static char DetectSeparator(string csvFilePath)
{
string[] lines = File.ReadAllLines(csvFilePath);
return DetectSeparator(lines);
}
public static char DetectSeparator(string[] lines)
{
var q = SeparatorChars.Select(sep => new
{Separator = sep, Found = lines.GroupBy(line => line.Count(ch => ch == sep))})
.OrderByDescending(res => res.Found.Count(grp => grp.Key > 0))
.ThenBy(res => res.Found.Count())
.First();
return q.Separator;
}
}
What this does is it reads the file line by line (note that CSV files may include line breaks), then checks for each potential separator how often it occurs in each line.
Then we check which separator occurs on the most lines, and of those which occur on the same number of lines, we take the one with the most even distribution (e.g. 5 occurences on every line are ranked higher than one that occurs once in one line and 10 times in another line).
Of course you might have to tweak this for your own purposes, add error handling, fallback logic and so forth. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's good enough for me.


You could probably take n bytes from the file, count possible delimiter characters(or all characters found) using a hash map/dictionary, and then the character repeated most is probably the delimiter you're looking for. It would make sense to me that the characters used as delimiters would be the ones used the most. When done you reset the stream, but since you're using a text reader you would have to probably initialize another text reader or something. This would get slightly more hairy if the CSV used more than one delimiter. You would probably have to ignore some characters like alpha and numeric.


In python we can do this easily by using csv sniffer. It will cater for text files and also if you just need to read some bytes from the file.

Related

How to find one of many possible substrings in a larger string?

I have a simple problem, but I could not find a simple solution yet.
I have a string containing for example this
UNB+123UNH+234BGM+345DTM+456
The actual string is lots larger, but you get the idea
now I have a set of values I need to find in this string
for example UNH and BGM and DTM and so on
So I need to search in the large string, and find the position of the first set of values.
something like this (not existing but to explain the idea)
string[] chars = {"UNH", "BGM", "DTM" };
int pos = test.IndexOfAny(chars);
in this case pos would be 8 because from all 3 substrings, UNH is the first occurrence in the variable test
What I actually trying to accomplish is splitting the large string into a list of strings, but the delimiter can be one of many values ("BGM", "UNH", "DTM")
So the result would be
UNB+123
UNH+234
BGM+345
DTM+456
I can off course build a loop that does IndexOf for each of the substrings, and then remember the smallest value, but that seems so inefficient. I am hoping for a better way to do this
EDIT
the substrings to search for are always 3 letters, but the text in between can be anything at all with any length
EDIT
It are always 3 alfanumeric characters, and then anything can be there, also lots of + signs

You will find more problems with EDI than just splitting into corresponding fields, what about conditions or multiple values or lists?. I recommend you to take a look at EDI.net
EDIT:
EDIFact is a format pretty complex to just use regex, as I mentioned before, you will have conditions for each format/field/process, you will need to catch the whole field in order to really parse it, means as example DTM can have one specific datetime format and in another EDI can have a DateTime format totally different.
However, this is the structure of a DTM field:
DTM DATE/TIME/PERIOD
Function: To specify date, and/or time, or period.
010 C507 DATE/TIME/PERIOD M 1
2005 Date or time or period function code
qualifier M an..3
2380 Date or time or period text C an..35
2379 Date or time or period format code C an..3
So you will have always something like 'DTM+d3:d35:d3' to search for.
Really, it doesn't worth the struggle, use EDI.net, create your own POCO classes and work from there.
Friendly reminder that EDIFact changes every 6 months on Europe.

If the separators can be any one of UNB, UNH, BGM, or DTM, the following Regex could work:
foreach (Match match in Regex.Matches(input, #"(UNB|UNH|BGM|DTM).+?(?=(UNB|UNH|BGM|DTM)|$)"))
{
Console.WriteLine(match.Value);
}
Explanation:
(UNB|UNH|BGM|DTM) matches either of the separators
.+? matches any string with at least one character (but as short as possible)
(?=(UNB|UNH|BGM|DTM)|$) matches if either a separator follows or if the string ends there - the match is however not included in the value.

It sounds like the other answer recognises the format - you should definitely consider a library specifically for parsing this format!
If you're intent on parsing it yourself, you could simply find the index of your identifiers in the string, determine the first 2 by position, and use those positions to Substring the original input
var input = "UNB+123UNH+234BGM+345DTM+456";
var chars = new[]{"UNH", "BGM", "DTM" };
var indexes = chars.Select(c => new{Length=c.Length,Position= input.IndexOf(c)}) // Get position and length of each input
.Where(x => x.Position>-1) // where there is actually a match
.OrderBy(x =>x.Position) // put them in order of the position in the input
.Take(2) // only interested in first 2
.ToArray(); // make it an array
if(indexes.Length < 2)
throw new Exception("Did not find 2");
var result = input.Substring(indexes[0].Position + indexes[0].Length, indexes[1].Position - indexes[0].Position - indexes[0].Length);
Live example: https://dotnetfiddle.net/tDiQLG

There is already a lot of answers here, but I took the time to write mine so might as well post it even if it's not as elegant.
The code assumes all tags are accounted for in the chars array.
string str = "UNB+123UNH+234BGM+345DTM+456";
string[] chars = { "UNH", "BGM", "DTM" };
var locations = chars.Select(o => str.IndexOf(o)).Where(i => i > -1).OrderBy(o => o);
var resultList = new List<string>();
for(int i = 0;i < locations.Count();i++)
{
var nextIndex = locations.ElementAtOrDefault(i + 1);
nextIndex = nextIndex > 0 ? nextIndex : str.Length;
nextIndex = nextIndex - locations.ElementAt(i);
resultList.Add(str.Substring(locations.ElementAt(i), nextIndex));
}

This is a fairly efficient O(n) solution using a HashSet
It's extremely simple, low allocations, more efficient than regex, and doesn't need a library
Given
private static HashSet<string> _set;
public static IEnumerable<string> Split(string input)
{
var last = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < input.Length-3; i++)
{
if (!_set.Contains(input.Substring(i, 3))) continue;
yield return input.Substring(last, i - last);
last = i;
}
yield return input.Substring(last);
}
Usage
_set = new HashSet<string>(new []{ "UNH", "BGM", "DTM" });
var results = Split("UNB+123UNH+234BGM+345DTM+456");
foreach (var item in results)
Console.WriteLine(item);
Output
UNB+123
UNH+234
BGM+345
DTM+456
Full Demo Here
Note : You could get this faster with a simple sorted tree, but would require more effort

How can i analise millions of strings that merge into each other?

I have millions of strings, around 8GB worth of HEX; each string is 3.2kb in length.
Each of these strings contains multiple parts of data I need to extract.
This is an example of one such string:
GPGGA,104644.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*43$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ$GPGGA,104645.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*42$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ ÿÿ!ÿÿ"ÿÿ#ÿÿ$ÿÿ%ÿÿ&ÿÿ'ÿÿ(ÿÿ)ÿÿ*ÿÿ+ÿÿ,ÿÿ-ÿÿ.ÿÿ/ÿÿ0ÿÿ1ÿÿ$GPGGA,104646.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*41$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test2ÿÿ3ÿÿ4ÿÿ5ÿÿ6ÿÿ7ÿÿ8ÿÿ9ÿÿ:ÿÿ;ÿÿ<ÿÿ=ÿÿ>ÿÿ?ÿÿ#ÿÿAÿÿBÿÿCÿÿDÿÿEÿÿFÿÿGÿÿHÿÿIÿÿJÿÿ$GPGGA,104647.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*40$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header TestKÿÿLÿÿMÿÿNÿÿOÿÿPÿÿQÿÿRÿÿSÿÿTÿÿUÿÿVÿÿWÿÿXÿÿYÿÿZÿÿ[ÿÿ\ÿÿ]ÿÿ^ÿÿ_ÿÿ`ÿÿaÿÿbÿÿcÿÿ$GPGGA,104648.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*4F$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Testdÿÿeÿÿfÿÿgÿÿhÿÿiÿÿjÿÿkÿÿlÿÿmÿÿnÿÿoÿÿpÿÿqÿÿrÿÿsÿÿtÿÿuÿÿvÿÿwÿÿxÿÿyÿÿzÿÿ{ÿÿ|ÿÿ$GPGGA,104649.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*4E$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test}ÿÿ~ÿÿ.ÿÿ€ÿÿ.ÿÿ‚ÿÿƒÿÿ„ÿÿ…ÿÿ†ÿÿ‡ÿÿˆÿÿ‰ÿÿŠÿÿ‹ÿÿŒÿÿ.ÿÿŽÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ‘ÿÿ’ÿÿ“ÿÿ”ÿÿ•ÿÿ$GPGGA,104650.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*46$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Head
as you can see it is pretty much this repeated:
GPGGA,104644.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*43$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ$GPGGA,104645.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*42$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*32Header Test.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ ÿÿ!ÿÿ"ÿÿ#ÿÿ$ÿÿ%ÿÿ&ÿÿ'ÿÿ(ÿÿ)ÿÿ*ÿÿ+ÿÿ,ÿÿ-ÿÿ.ÿÿ/ÿÿ0ÿÿ1ÿÿ
I want to separate this string into two lists like this:
_GPSList
$GPGGA,104644.091,,,,,0,0,,,M,,M,,*43
$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N*
$GPVTG,0.00,T,,M,0.00,N,0.00,K,N
_WavList
32HeaderTest.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ
32HeaderTest.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ.ÿÿ ÿÿ!ÿÿ"ÿÿ#ÿÿ$ÿÿ%ÿÿ&ÿÿ'ÿÿ(ÿÿ)ÿÿ*ÿÿ+ÿÿ,ÿÿ-ÿÿ.ÿÿ/ÿÿ0ÿÿ1ÿÿ
Issue 1:
This repetition isn't containing within a single string, it overflows into the next string. so if some data crosses the end and start of two strings how to I deal with that?
Issue 2: How do I analyse the string and extract only the parts I need?

The solution I'm providing is not a complete answer but more like an idea which might help you get what you want.
Everything else which I present is an assumption on my behalf.
//Assuming your data is stored in a file "yourdatafile"
//Splitting all the text on "$" assuming this will separate GPSData
string[] splittedstring = File.ReadAllText("yourdatafile").Split('$');
//I found an extra string lingering in the sample you provided
//because I splitted on "$", so you gotta take that into account
var GPSList = new List<string>();
var WAVList = new List<string>();
foreach (var str in splittedstring)
{
//So if the string contains "Header" we would want to separate it from GPS data
if (str.Contains("Header"))
{
string temp = str.Remove(str.IndexOf("Header"));
int indexOfAsterisk = temp.LastIndexOf("*");
string stringBeforeAsterisk = str.Substring(0, indexOfAsterisk + 1);
string stringAfterAsterisk = str.Replace(stringBeforeAsterisk, "");
WAVList.Add(stringAfterAsterisk);
GPSList.Add("$" + stringBeforeAsterisk);
}
else
GPSList.Add("$" + str);
}
This provides the exact output as you need, only exception is with that extra string. Also some non-standard characters might look like black blocks.

Dictionary re-adding words as new keys instead of increasing value

I am writing a program that finds every unique word in a text and prints it in a text box. I do this by printing each key in a dictionary however my dictionary is adding each word as a separate key instead of ignoring words that are already there.
The function is being called correctly and it does work it simpy prints the entire text I hand it however.
EDIT: I am reading the string from a text file then sending it to the function.
This is the input string and the output:
Output:
To be or not to that is the question Whether tis nobler in mind suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or take arms against a sea
troubles And by opposing end them die sleep No more sleep say we end
The heartache thousand natural shocks That flesh heir Tis consummation
public string FindUniqueWords(string text)
{
Dictionary<string, int> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, int>();
string uniqueWord = "";
text = text.Replace(",", ""); //Just cleaning up a bit
text = text.Replace(".", ""); //Just cleaning up a bit
string[] arr = text.Split(' '); //Create an array of words
foreach (string word in arr) //let's loop over the words
{
if (dictionary.ContainsKey(word)) //if it's in the dictionary
dictionary[word] = dictionary[word] + 1; //Increment the count
else
dictionary[word] = 1; //put it in the dictionary with a count 1
}
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> pair in dictionary) //loop through the dictionary
{
uniqueWord += (pair.Key + " ");
}
uniqueWords.Text = uniqueWord;
return ("");
}

You're reading the text with System.IO.File.ReadAllText, so text may also contain newline characters.
Replace arr = text.Split(' ') by arr = text.Split(' ', '\r', '\n') or add another replace: text = text.Replace(Environment.NewLine, " ");
Of course, by looking at arr in the debugger, you could have found out by yourself.

A shorter way: (Dont forget to use Using System.Linq)
string strInput = "TEST TEST Text 123";
var words = strInput.Split().Distinct();
foreach (var word in words )
{
Console.WriteLine(word);
}

Your code works as it's supposed to (ignoring case though). The problem almost certainly lies with showing the results in your application, or with how you are calling the FindUniqueWords method (not the complete text at once).
Also, pretty important to note here: a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> by default simply cannot contain a single key multiple times. It would defeat the whole purpose of the dictionary in the first place. It's only possible if you override the Equality comparison somewhere, which you aren't doing.
If I try your code, with the following input:
To be or not to that is is is is is is is the question
The output becomes :
To be or not to that is the question
It works like it's supposed to.

How to properly split a CSV using C# split() function?

Suppose I have this CSV file :
NAME,ADDRESS,DATE
"Eko S. Wibowo", "Tamanan, Banguntapan, Bantul, DIY", "6/27/1979"
I would like like to store each token that enclosed using a double quotes to be in an array, is there a safe to do this instead of using the String split() function? Currently I load up the file in a RichTextBox, and then using its Lines[] property, I do a loop for each Lines[] element and doing this :
string[] line = s.Split(',');
s is a reference to RichTextBox.Lines[].
And as you can clearly see, the comma inside a token can easily messed up split() function. So, instead of ended with three token as I want it, I ended with 6 tokens
Any help will be appreciated!

You could use regex too:
string input = "\"Eko S. Wibowo\", \"Tamanan, Banguntapan, Bantul, DIY\", \"6/27/1979\"";
string pattern = #"""\s*,\s*""";
// input.Substring(1, input.Length - 2) removes the first and last " from the string
string[] tokens = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Split(
input.Substring(1, input.Length - 2), pattern);
This will give you:
Eko S. Wibowo
Tamanan, Banguntapan, Bantul, DIY
6/27/1979

I've done this with my own method. It simply counts the amout of " and ' characters.
Improve this to your needs.
public List<string> SplitCsvLine(string s) {
int i;
int a = 0;
int count = 0;
List<string> str = new List<string>();
for (i = 0; i < s.Length; i++) {
switch (s[i]) {
case ',':
if ((count & 1) == 0) {
str.Add(s.Substring(a, i - a));
a = i + 1;
}
break;
case '"':
case '\'': count++; break;
}
}
str.Add(s.Substring(a));
return str;
}

It's not an exact answer to your question, but why don't you use already written library to manipulate CSV file, good example would be LinqToCsv. CSV could be delimited with various punctuation signs. Moreover, there are gotchas, which are already addressed by library creators. Such as dealing with name row, dealing with different date formats and mapping rows to C# objects.

You can replace "," with ; then split by ;
var values= s.Replace("\",\"",";").Split(';');

If your CSV line is tightly packed it's easiest to use the end and tail removal mentioned earlier and then a simple split on a joining string
string[] tokens = input.Substring(1, input.Length - 2).Split("\",\"");
This will only work if ALL fields are double-quoted even if they don't (officially) need to be. It will be faster than RegEx but with given conditions as to its use.
Really useful if your data looks like
"Name","1","12/03/2018","Add1,Add2,Add3","other stuff"

Five years old but there is always somebody new who wants to split a CSV.
If your data is simple and predictable (i.e. never has any special characters like commas, quotes and newlines) then you can do it with split() or regex.
But to support all the nuances of the CSV format properly without code soup you should really use a library where all the magic has already been figured out. Don't re-invent the wheel (unless you are doing it for fun of course).
CsvHelper is simple enough to use:
https://joshclose.github.io/CsvHelper/2.x/
using (var parser = new CsvParser(textReader)
{
while(true)
{
string[] line = parser.Read();
if (line != null)
{
// do something
}
else
{
break;
}
}
}
More discussion / same question:
Dealing with commas in a CSV file

Need to pick up line terminators with StreamReader.ReadLine()

I wrote a C# program to read an Excel .xls/.xlsx file and output to CSV and Unicode text. I wrote a separate program to remove blank records. This is accomplished by reading each line with StreamReader.ReadLine(), and then going character by character through the string and not writing the line to output if it contains all commas (for the CSV) or all tabs (for the Unicode text).
The problem occurs when the Excel file contains embedded newlines (\x0A) inside the cells. I changed my XLS to CSV converter to find these new lines (since it goes cell by cell) and write them as \x0A, and normal lines just use StreamWriter.WriteLine().
The problem occurs in the separate program to remove blank records. When I read in with StreamReader.ReadLine(), by definition it only returns the string with the line, not the terminator. Since the embedded newlines show up as two separate lines, I can't tell which is a full record and which is an embedded newline for when I write them to the final file.
I'm not even sure I can read in the \x0A because everything on the input registers as '\n'. I could go character by character, but this destroys my logic to remove blank lines.

I would recommend that you change your architecture to work more like a parser in a compiler.
You want to create a lexer that returns a sequence of tokens, and then a parser that reads the sequence of tokens and does stuff with them.
In your case the tokens would be:
Column data
Comma
End of Line
You would treat '\n' ('\x0a') by its self as an embedded new line, and therefore include it as part of a column data token. A '\r\n' would constitute an End of Line token.
This has the advantages of:
Doing only 1 pass over the data
Only storing a max of 1 lines worth of data
Reusing as much memory as possible (for the string builder and the list)
It's easy to change should your requirements change
Here's a sample of what the Lexer would look like:
Disclaimer: I haven't even compiled, let alone tested, this code, so you'll need to clean it up and make sure it works.
enum TokenType
{
ColumnData,
Comma,
LineTerminator
}
class Token
{
public TokenType Type { get; private set;}
public string Data { get; private set;}
public Token(TokenType type)
{
Type = type;
}
public Token(TokenType type, string data)
{
Type = type;
Data = data;
}
}
private IEnumerable<Token> GetTokens(TextReader s)
{
var builder = new StringBuilder();
while (s.Peek() >= 0)
{
var c = (char)s.Read();
switch (c)
{
case ',':
{
if (builder.Length > 0)
{
yield return new Token(TokenType.ColumnData, ExtractText(builder));
}
yield return new Token(TokenType.Comma);
break;
}
case '\r':
{
var next = s.Peek();
if (next == '\n')
{
s.Read();
}
if (builder.Length > 0)
{
yield return new Token(TokenType.ColumnData, ExtractText(builder));
}
yield return new Token(TokenType.LineTerminator);
break;
}
default:
builder.Append(c);
break;
}
}
s.Read();
if (builder.Length > 0)
{
yield return new Token(TokenType.ColumnData, ExtractText(builder));
}
}
private string ExtractText(StringBuilder b)
{
var ret = b.ToString();
b.Remove(0, b.Length);
return ret;
}
Your "parser" code would then look like this:
public void ConvertXLS(TextReader s)
{
var columnData = new List<string>();
bool lastWasColumnData = false;
bool seenAnyData = false;
foreach (var token in GetTokens(s))
{
switch (token.Type)
{
case TokenType.ColumnData:
{
seenAnyData = true;
if (lastWasColumnData)
{
//TODO: do some error reporting
}
else
{
lastWasColumnData = true;
columnData.Add(token.Data);
}
break;
}
case TokenType.Comma:
{
if (!lastWasColumnData)
{
columnData.Add(null);
}
lastWasColumnData = false;
break;
}
case TokenType.LineTerminator:
{
if (seenAnyData)
{
OutputLine(lastWasColumnData);
}
seenAnyData = false;
lastWasColumnData = false;
columnData.Clear();
}
}
}
if (seenAnyData)
{
OutputLine(columnData);
}
}

You can't change StreamReader to return the line terminators, and you can't change what it uses for line termination.
I'm not entirely clear about the problem in terms of what escaping you're doing, particularly in terms of "and write them as \x0A". A sample of the file would probably help.
It sounds like you may need to work character by character, or possibly load the whole file first and do a global replace, e.g.
x.Replace("\r\n", "\u0000") // Or some other unused character
.Replace("\n", "\\x0A") // Or whatever escaping you need
.Replace("\u0000", "\r\n") // Replace the real line breaks
I'm sure you could do that with a regex and it would probably be more efficient, but I find the long way easier to understand :) It's a bit of a hack having to do a global replace though - hopefully with more information we'll come up with a better solution.

Essentially, a hard-return in Excel (shift+enter or alt+enter, I can't remember) puts a newline that is equivalent to \x0A in the default encoding I use to write my CSV. When I write to CSV, I use StreamWriter.WriteLine(), which outputs the line plus a newline (which I believe is \r\n).
The CSV is fine and comes out exactly how Excel would save it, the problem is when I read it into the blank record remover, I'm using ReadLine() which will treat a record with an embedded newline as a CRLF.
Here's an example of the file after I convert to CSV...
Reference,Name of Individual or Entity,Type,Name Type,Date of Birth,Place of Birth,Citizenship,Address,Additional Information,Listing Information,Control Date,Committees
1050,"Aziz Salih al-Numan
",Individual,Primary Name,1941 or 1945,An Nasiriyah,Iraqi,,Ba’th Party Regional Command Chairman; Former Governor of Karbala and An Najaf Former Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (1986-1987),Resolution 1483 (2003),6/27/2003,1518 (Iraq)
1050a,???? ???? ???????,Individual,Original script,1941 or 1945,An Nasiriyah,Iraqi,,Ba’th Party Regional Command Chairman; Former Governor of Karbala and An Najaf Former Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform (1986-1987),Resolution 1483 (2003),6/27/2003,1518 (Iraq)
As you can see, the first record has an embedded new-line after al-Numan. When I use ReadLine(), I get '1050,"Aziz Salih al-Numan' and when I write that out, WriteLine() ends that line with a CRLF. I lose the original line terminator. When I use ReadLine() again, I get the line starting with '1050a'.
I could read the entire file in and replace them, but then I'd have to replace them back afterwards. Basically what I want to do is get the line terminator to determine if its \x0a or a CRLF, and then if its \x0A, I'll use Write() and insert that terminator.

I know I'm a little late to the game here, but I was having the same problem and my solution was a lot simpler than most given.
If you are able to determine the column count which should be easy to do since the first line is usually the column titles, you can check your column count against the expected column count. If the column count doesn't equal the expected column count, you simply concatenate the current line with the previous unmatched lines. For example:
string sep = "\",\"";
int columnCount = 0;
while ((currentLine = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
{
if (lineCount == 0)
{
lineData = inLine.Split(new string[] { sep }, StringSplitOptions.None);
columnCount = lineData.length;
++lineCount;
continue;
}
string thisLine = lastLine + currentLine;
lineData = thisLine.Split(new string[] { sep }, StringSplitOptions.None);
if (lineData.Length < columnCount)
{
lastLine += currentLine;
continue;
}
else
{
lastLine = null;
}
......

Thank you so much with your code and some others I came up with the following solution! I have added a link at the bottom to some code I wrote that used some of the logic from this page. I figured I'd give honor where honor was due! Thanks!
Below is a explanation about what I needed:
Try This, I wrote this because I have some very large '|' delimited files that have \r\n inside of some of the columns and I needed to use \r\n as the end of the line delimiter. I was trying to import some files using SSIS packages but because of some corrupted data in the files I was unable to. The File was over 5 GB so it was too large to open and manually fix. I found the answer through looking through lots of Forums to understand how streams work and ended up coming up with a solution that reads each character in a file and spits out the line based on the definitions I added into it. this is for use in a Command Line Application, complete with help :). I hope this helps some other people out, I haven't found a solution quite like it anywhere else, although the ideas were inspired by this forum and others.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/12640862/1582188

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