[Python-Dev] Minor change to behaviour of csv module (original) (raw)

Andrew McNamara andrewm at object-craft.com.au
Fri Jan 7 13:06:23 CET 2005

I'm considering a change to the csv module that could potentially break some obscure uses of the module (but CSV files usually quote, rather than escape, so the most common uses aren't effected).

Currently, with a non-default escapechar='\', input like: _field one,field _ two,field three Returns: ["field one", "field \\ntwo", "field three"] In the 2.5 series, I propose changing this to return: ["field one", "field \ntwo", "field three"] Is this reasonable? Is the old behaviour desirable in any way (we could add a switch to enable to new behaviour, but I feel that would only allow the confusion to continue)?

Thinking about this further, I suspect we have to retain the current behaviour, as broken as it is, as the default: it's conceivable that someone somewhere is post-processing the result to remove the backslashes, and if we fix the csv module, we'll break their code.

Note that PEP-305 had nothing to say about escaping, nor does the module reference manual.

-- Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft http://www.object-craft.com.au/

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