Action Statement

Change the column delimiter used in text strings.

change TABLE_NAME column delimiter to {csv|tab|STRING}

TABLE_NAME

The identifier for a table.

csv | tab | STRING

The column delimiter format you want to use when converting rows to and from text strings. The default is tab; this is commonly used for transferring column-oriented text on the clipboard. Comma-separated value format (csv) is often used when storing column data in text files. Your application can also specify its own column delimiter with a single-character STRING.

Description

Use this statement to change the column delimiter used when converting rows to and from text strings. The csv and tab delimiter formats change the row delimiter to be new line.

If the delimiter is csv when converting a row to a string, column values are quoted, if necessary. In this case, if a column value contains either a comma or a quote, then the value is quoted, and all quotes in the string will be doubled. For example, a column value of John said, "Hi!", when converted for csv format, would become "John said, ""Hi!""". Other delimiters do not use quotes.

Example

 

action NewTableContents is

 ...

 copy " add to Table_TBL insert row file \""

 InitFilename_SV "\"" to MsgStr_SV

 action SendMsg

 change Table_TBL column delimiter to csv

 add to Table_TBL insert row file InitFilename_SV

 action DoneMsg

See Also

change row delimiter Built-in Function

read Action Statement

table Object Definition

write Action Statement