Re^2: Semicolon delimited to Comma delimited

Hey CountZero!

Thanks! I already did think of that solution but i must also mention it was my last choice! You can see why in my reply to 'marinersk'. But someone gave me a nice idea which could work(i have not tested this yet but could definitely be a light in the dark tunnel of CSV/Excel features!)

#Get system language id to know German/US format of excels
Win32::API->Import('kernel32.dll', 'long GetSystemDefaultLangID()') or
+ die "Can't import GetSystemDefaultLangID: $^E\n";
$langid = GetSystemDefaultLangID() & 0xFFFF or die "ERROR: LANGID Retu
+rned <undef>\n"; # Mask out the garbage in high-order bytes
#my $langid = GetSystemDefaultLangID();
warn "my language id is :" .$langid;
[download]

This could be used at the start of a Perl script to identify if the list separator that comes along with a *.csv is going to be a semi-colon or comma! I do hope this comes in handy to anyone who faces this problem in the future!

Thank you fellow monks for your delightful replies!! I shall post one final comment if this idea works out. If not (i do hope it would), guess the discussion is still open for ideas!

Comment on Re^2: Semicolon delimited to Comma delimited Download Code

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Re^3: Semicolon delimited to Comma delimited by afoken (Chancellor) on Apr 24, 2015 at 16:09 UTC
Have you considered using one of Excels native file formats instead of fighting with CSV? Spreadsheet::WriteExcel creates the old binary Excel 97 format (`.xls`), Excel::Writer::XLSX creates the new zipped XML format (`.xlsx`). You should use the new format unless you have to use Excel versions from the last century. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Semicolon delimited to Comma delimited by afoken (Chancellor) on Apr 24, 2015 at 17:56 UTC
`#Get system language id to know German/US format of excels Win32::API->Import('kernel32.dll', 'long GetSystemDefaultLangID()') or + die "Can't import GetSystemDefaultLangID: $^E\n"; $langid = GetSystemDefaultLangID() & 0xFFFF or die "ERROR: LANGID Retu +rned <undef>\n"; # Mask out the garbage in high-order bytes` [download] Nice idea, but it is not going to work reliably. Quoting the documentation of Text::CSV_XS (by Tux): The import/export from Microsoft Excel is a risky task, according to the documentation in `Text::CSV::Separator`. Microsoft uses the system's list separator defined in the regional settings, which happens to be a semicolon for Dutch, German and Spanish (and probably some others as well). For the English locale, the default is a comma. In Windows however, the user is free to choose a predefined locale, and then change every individual setting in it, so checking the locale is no solution. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply] [d/l] [select]