Re: csv format for psql

Hi Pavel,

> On Apr 6, 2018, at 1:38 AM, Pavel Stehule <pavel(dot)stehule(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
>
> 2018-04-06 5:46 GMT+02:00 Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org <mailto:jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org>>:
>
> > On Apr 5, 2018, at 11:08 PM, Peter Eisentraut <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com <mailto:peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>> wrote:
> >
> > On 4/1/18 03:27, Pavel Stehule wrote:
> >> I don't share option so CSV format should be exactly same like CSV COPY.
> >> COPY is designed for backups - and header is not too important there.
> >> When I seen some csv, then there usually header was used.
> >
> > I think in practice a lot of people use COPY also because it's a nice
> > way to get CSV output, even if it's not for backups. The options that
> > COPY has for CSV are clearly designed around making the output
> > compatible with various CSV-variants.
>
> +1
>
> From a user standpoint this was mostly how I use COPY. Someone
> requests a report that they can manipulate in $SPREADSHEET. I write
> a query, place it inside a “COPY” statement with FORMAT CSV,
> HEADER TRUE, save to file, and deliver.
>
> > Another thought: Isn't CSV just the same as unaligned output plus some
> > quoting? Could we add a quote character setting and then define --csv
> > to be quote-character = " and fieldsep = , ?
>
> This makes a lot of sense. I’ve also generated CSV files using a
> combination of:
>
> \f ,
> \a
> \o file.csv
>
> and then running the query, but if any of the fields contained a “,” if would
> inevitably break in $SPREADSHEET.
>
> unfortunately, most used CSV separator in Czech Repuplic is ; due MS Excel settings for CR

Sure. So in that case with the above, I would have used "\f ;” or
DELIMITER ‘;’ so it sounds like Peter’s suggestion is still valid.

Jonathan