How do Import a csv file that contains strings

Question

I have a file that contains numbers as US formmated $$$  such as $1,123,123,123  I have a perl script on one of our linux servers that creates the csv file as
"Total Dollars","$1,123,123,123","some other string","etc"  but when I import the file into numbers
Unnamed Table
Average Price'
$160
686'
$222
482'
$114
820'
$188
062'
I cant find a setting anywhere that says to ignore commas inside a string.  This works in most other applications.

Answer 1

I apologize but you wrote :
WALTER-MILANO-ITALY wrote:
You should be now able to import the file using ; as separator or if you prefer you can do again the change  of ; with ,
It's not a matter of preferences. The OP can't import a file whose values are separated by semi-colons.
He must replace them by commas.
With your scheme :
Original datas
'Total Dollars','$1,123,123,123','some other string','etc'
after your step 1
'Total Dollars';'$1,123,123,123','some other string','etc'
after your step 2
'Total Dollars';'$1,123,123,123''some other string''etc'
and the datas are completly unusable
A possible scheme would be :
Original datas
'Total Dollars','$1,123,123,123','some other string','etc'
'Totals Dollars','$12,123,123,123’,’blahblah’,’etc'
after possible step 1 (replace ‘,’ by ",")
'Total Dollars";"$1,123,123,123";"some other string";"etc'
'Totals Dollars";"$12,123,123,123";"blahblah";"etc'
after possible step 2 (replace single ‘ by ")
"Total Dollars";"$1,123,123,123";"some other string";"etc"
"Totals Dollars";"$12,123,123,123";"blahblah";"etc"
after possible step 3 (replace ";" by ",")
"Total Dollars","$1,123,123,123","some other string","etc"
"Totals Dollars","$12,123,123,123","blahblah","etc"
This one may be imported by Numbers on thez OP’s machine.
I don't know if these changes may be done with Perl but I know that they are easy to do with AppleScript.
But honestly, if Perl is able to build a TAB separated values file, it would be more efficient.
Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 25 janvier 2012
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