Why you can’t parse CSV with a regular expression

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And one of the things they can’t do is to reliably parse CSV (comma separated value) files. The second quote puts you into a ‘might be an escaped for the following character or might be end of data’ state. You can write a regex that can handle CSV file where you are guaranteed there are no commas, quotes or carriage returns in the data values. But commas, quotes or carriage returns in the data values are perfectly valid in CSV files. not allowed to contain tabs or carriage returns in data and therefore don’t need escaping.

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