New Issue with Roster Export

blueflame4444

I made a similar thread about an older issue regarding this function a few weeks ago, and thought that if I just replied to that thread with the new bug you'd take notice. Evidently not, considering the continued presence of the bug in the game following today's update. In order to fix the comma issue in the resulting file, you decided to put quotation marks around the affected fields. However, you didn't bother to escape quotation marks inside those quotation marks, which results in Excel/other programs interpreting the remainder of the line as being part of that columns. This is another really simple fix (<30 seconds), you just have to replace all quotations in user comments (") with two quotation marks (""), which Excel will deal with properly.

For example, the user comment:

"Live Long and Prosper" - Spock

Must be written to the CSV file as:

"""Live Long and Prosper"" - Spock"

Not as:

""Live Long and Prosper" - Spock"

Which is how it is currently written to the file.

swamarian

Or they could just go with Tab separated files, and bypass problems with commas entirely.

majortiraomega

With only a very minor amount of work one can parse this entire CSV file with any programming language in existence. Here's an extremely simple way to do it with the Microsoft Powershell scripting language as an example:

• In Microsoft Powershell type the following command: $1 = import-csv <Location of your CSV file here in double quotes>
  • For example, I could type $1 = import-csv "C:\Fleet Roster.csv"
  • This would tell powershell to import the data in the CSV file located in C:\Fleet Roster.csv and store it in a "variable" called $1
• Next type this command: $1 | out-gridview
  • This command tells powershell to take the data loaded in variable called $1 and output it in a way that is easily human readable.
  • No need to fight with Microsoft Excel at all in this case.

Typing those two lines will give you a graphical user interface with the entire file parsed out. You can then apply any filters you'd like with the "Add Criteria" button in the top left corner.​​

majortiraomega

Duplicate post​​

majortiraomega

Double post​​

blueflame4444

You didn't read the issue I posted. This is not only an issue that occurs with Excel, it's an issue that occurs with any and all CSV readers. Take a look at a sample of the Powershell output:


EDIT: Zoom, you can't really read that picture on the forums


Considering my public comment in-game is:

Test, comment"

I would have to say that this issue still occurs in Powershell, and it's also occurred when using Python's csv module to read the file. Now, this may seem a minor issue (oh, public comment and public comment date are mashed together, whoop-de-doo), but that's because I'm an officer in my fleet. If someone who wasn't an officer had a double quote in their public comment, their public comments, public comment date, officer comment, officer comment date, and officer comment author would all be mashed together, which is a more serious issue.

With regards to your Powershell solution, most people will not be sufficiently comfortable with programming languages to read the file that way (even though it encounters the same issues) and will rely on Excel or an equivalent program to read it, all of which will run into the same issue.