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Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

Anything that requires multiple files to be passed around together is a non-starter. Even with just one file it's so hard for people to keep track of the 'current' one.

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Yeah, if you are going to change the spec just put the format in the first lines of the file.

  %csvddfVersion: 1.2
  %delimiter: ","
  %doubleQuote: true
  %lineTerminator: "\r\n"
  %quoteChar: "\""
  %skipInitialSpace: true
  %header: true
  %commentChar: "#"
  %mandatory: address name
  %type: address:string
  %type: name:string
  %type: birthday:date
  %type: telephone:number

  address,name,birthday,telephone
  177A Bleecker Street,Stephen Strange,1963-01-01

Or something like that, where everything up to the first blank line is the schema.

Thinking same thing. CSV is already a text file. Why not just append the metadata to the file already. Call it a CSF file or something like that.

I think that's why the archive is part of the format. But then you have a process change where you expect people to work with the archive and not the contents. That can be done but it requires some institutional will.

For instance in a code signing situation it was socialized that only the archive was 'safe' and you used one of several tools to build them or crack them open. However that company was already used to thinking about physical shipping manifests and so learning by analogy worked, after a fashion.

That's a distinction without a difference. It's either a binary format--not a CSV. Or it's a CSV file + another file. You can't have it both ways.

Agree but there are whole industries that's work this way. Looking at you banking and finance.

I put any metadata in the first lines of the file. You can trivially have R skip those lines.

Even better, you can just bake that metadata into the column headers. CSVs have no mechanism or widely accepted habit on skipping over entries - it's safer and more portable to bake any control data you need into the place reserved for it - the header line.

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