When working with CSV files, escaping and unescaping refers to handling special characters that may conflict with the format, like commas, quotes, or newlines. Here's a basic explanation of how these work:
CSV Escape
In CSV, values that contain special characters (like commas or newlines) are enclosed in double quotes ("). If the value itself contains double quotes, those double quotes are escaped by placing two double quotes together ("").
Example of escaping:
c
Name, Age, Address
"John, Doe", 28, "1234 Elm St, Apt 56"
The comma in "John, Doe" is escaped because it's inside quotes.
The newline inside the address would also be escaped if necessary.
CSV Unescape
Unescaping means removing the quotes and handling any double quotes that were used for escaping. If there were double quotes inside a value, you replace them with a single quote.
Example of unescaping:
csv
Name, Age, Address
John, Doe, 28, 1234 Elm St, Apt 56
The extra quotes are removed.
Double quotes within values are converted back to a single quote.