Awesome

libcsv

Comma Separated Values implementation for the C89 language.

Goals

• ability to read arbitrary huge files
• focus on speed by omitting unnecessary operations such as memory allocation
• simplest possible API with proper error handling

Documentation

Opening a data file

In order to open a file, use the csv_open function. It expects four arguments:

• pointer to a struct csv
• path of the CSV data file
• the field separator (record separator is always \n)
• field_count of every record

Reading records

This is the main operation that has to be called separately for every record in the data, essentially functioning as a stream of data. It only provides pointers to a NULL-terminated array of strings (char***). None of these strings are allocated, therefore all strings that need to preserved and not only parsed (and acted upon) need to be strdup-ed. The function csv_read_record expects a pointer to the struct csv and, as previously mentioned`, it returns all field strings via the second argument.

Moreover, this function can be used to skip the optional headers.

Finalisation

After reading all necessary records from the data set, use the csv_close function to close the file descriptor and to deallocate all internal data structures.

Return codes

It may happen that one or more of the previously mentioned function will return a value different from CSV_OK. In case you want to inform your user what kind of error it is, use the csv_error_string that converts the int return code into a meaningful English message.

Example

The file people.c provides a basic source code to a read a data set stored in the people.csv.

Supported platforms

• FreeBSD 10.0 with Clang 3.3
• OS X 10.9 with Clang 3.5
• Linux Gentoo 2.2 with Clang 3.6

If a platform does not appear to be in the previous list, it does not mean that libcsv will not work in such environment. It only means that nobody tested it - you are encouraged to do so and report either success or failure.

Build & install

$ ninja
$ sudo ./install.sh

License

2-clause BSD license. For more information please consult the LICENSE file. In the case that you need a different license, feel free to contact me.

Author

Daniel Lovasko (daniel.lovasko@gmail.com)