[Gretl-devel] Re: glitch with tab-separated files (not comma-separated)
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Am 21.01.2020 um 16:50 schrieb Sven Schreiber:
> I've noticed that the following example delimited-text file can't be
> imported (probably the tabs aren't visible in email, but the second line
> ends with a tab):
>
> <tsv>
> obs,v1,v2
OK, this was stupid mistake here when posting the message, but for
testing I had tabs in this line as well, not commas! So this time I
think it's not my stupidity which is the root cause, but a real issue...
There's a note in the csvdata.c source on this point:
"/* Problem: (when) should a trailing delimiter be read as an
implicit NA? For now we'll so treat it if the delimiter
is not white space.
*/"
The thinking here was that white space at the end of a line may well
just be random junk. However, I guess one can make a case for counting
tab as a "proper" delimiter. That's now in git, and in the comment
above I've substituted, "if the delimiter is not plain space".
Allin