[GNC] character encoding and CSV standards

[Tom Teixeira]

RFC 4180 itself states:

"Status of This Memo

    This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
    not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
    memo is unlimited.
"

But RFCs are more official than other sources. There are "Informative 
References: near the end of RFC 4180 that include othe descriptions of 
"Comma Separated Value" files. Three references are still live on the 
internet as of this writing, and none describe use of backslash to 
escape a quote character or anything else.

A fourth is a comparison of several methods of representing data in a 
text file. But this author dislike CSV format precisely because it does 
not use an escape character.

And the problem I encountered is one of a failure to identify the values 
in each field. The sequence \" in the CSV files I am downloaded have the 
backslash (\) appearing as the last character in the description. I'm 
not sure why, but my issue is simply that Gnucash does not find the 
fields in these files the same way Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets and 
Apple Numbers which all read this CSV file consistent with RFC 4180.

On 6/6/26 9:50 PM, Patrick James via gnucash-user wrote:
> There is no ""official" definition of CSV format." Unless, of course, by official in quotes you do mean not necessarily official.
>
> With CSV two individual parties can agree on a standard, be it RFC4180 or some other format. If the data is just being handed to you from someone who is not willing to agree to your specific needs, then you must process the data as provided, which generally means pre-process before import.
>
> Also based on your bug report, my guess is this is more about interpreting character encoding, specifically the \" combination, rather than the parsing of the CSV fields.
>
>> On 06/06/2026 6:29 PM PDT Tom Teixeira <tjteixeira at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>   
>> Look at RFC 4180 which is the "official" definition of CSV format. Bank
>> of America is producing CSV files that are consistent with the RFC, and
>> can also be read directly by Microsoft Excel. Apple's Numbers,
>> LibreOffice and Google Sheets all handle this CSV file without problems,
>> so I believe it is a Gnucash bug, not a Bank of America bug.
>>
>> On 6/6/26 7:44 PM, David Cousens wrote:
>>> BoA problem not GnuCash problem.
>>>
>>> On Sat, 2026-06-06 at 09:56 -0400, Tom Teixeira wrote:
>>>> I would like a bugzilla account. I have encountered a bug with CSV
>>>> files
>>>> from Bank of America sometimes having embedded backslashes that do
>>>> not
>>>> import properly. I work around the problem by editing the CSV file
>>>> before importing, but did investigate and found RFC 4180 does not
>>>> allow
>>>> use of backslash as a quote character. I want to submit a formal bug
>>>> and
>>>> may be able to construct a patch to fix the bug.
>>>>
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