[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #58813] csvread fails to handle 1st cell of CSV as exported by MS Excel as 'utf-8 CSV' due to byte order mark

[anonymous]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58813>

                 Summary: csvread fails to handle 1st cell of CSV as exported
by MS Excel as 'utf-8 CSV' due to byte order mark
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: None
            Submitted on: Thu 23 Jul 2020 09:47:08 PM UTC
                Category: Octave Function
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: None
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: Adrian Barnes
        Originator Email: anthony_325@tpg.com.au
             Open/Closed: Open
                 Release: 5.2.0
         Discussion Lock: Any
        Operating System: Any

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Details:

Greetings, I have noticed that csvread incorrectly returns the first cell as
‘0’, when the csv file was saved from MS Excel as ‘UTF-8 csv’, but
works okay when the export type is ‘CSV’. So I suspect something is going
wrong with how csvread works with the ‘byte order mark’ that MS Excel is
now using for this export type. While I am not implying csvread contains a bug
(it is probably meant to work only with ascii csv), it may be appropriate to
add a caveat to the documentation, i.e. csvread’s function reference.

To replicate using GNU Octave 5.2 for linux or for windows (I have tried
both), and Excel 365, create a csv file csvu.csv such as [1 2 3; 4 5 6] and
save as utf8 csv, and the same numbers saved as plain (ascii) csva.csv. In
Octave, use csvread on both files and observe the first value is 0 from
csvu.csv and 1 from csva.csv.

I originally raised this on the GNU/Octave discourse page:
https://octave.discourse.group/t/csvread-1st-cell-incorrect-with-utf-8-csv-files-from-ms-excel/99/2




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File Attachments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 23 Jul 2020 09:47:08 PM UTC  Name: csvu.csv  Size: 24B   By: None

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=49537>
-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu 23 Jul 2020 09:47:08 PM UTC  Name: csva.csv  Size: 21B   By: None

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=49538>

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