^M^M Control Character Substitution

[Frank Guerino]

Hi,

I have code that successfully reads a CSV file using FasterCSV and puts
the data into a simple, 2x2 array.

Some of the cells I read in and print out to a file contain some kind of
a control character that I don't know how to strip out and substitute
with formal line feeds or carriage returns.

Data in original spreadsheet cell that gets read in as CSV reads:

"...

1. String A
2. String B

..."

Data, after reading CSV file and printing out cell to a file reads:

"...

1. String A^M^MString B

..."

My problem is that I need to get the latter output to look like the
original data.

Does anyone know a quick and simple way to parse the string for the
control character "^M^M" and replace it with a formal line feed or
carriage return?

Thanks for your help,

Frank

 

[Daniel Schömer]

Hi!

I have code that successfully reads a CSV file using FasterCSV and puts
the data into a simple, 2x2 array.

[...}
Data in original spreadsheet cell that gets read in as CSV reads:

"...
1. String A
2. String B
.."

Data, after reading CSV file and printing out cell to a file reads:

"...
1. String A^M^MString B
.."

My problem is that I need to get the latter output to look like the
original data.
[...]

The "^M" should represent a "carridge return" control character.
The CR of a CRLF linebreak, see [1]. In a ruby regular
expression, ^M should be matched by \r.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline

It seems like different or wrong types of newlines/linebreaks
inside the CSV file (mixed CRLF and LF, ...).

Since I don't know FasterCSV, there may be a solution for this
within FasterCSV.

If not, replacing ^M^M with a single newline might help:

data.gsub(/\r\r/, "\n")

Regards,
Daniel