#118·q

Auto-detection of commas in column names

Author: llagerlofCreated Dec 14, 2015Updated Apr 10, 2025

I have this "people.csv" file:

id,name,age,gender
1,Lawrence,39,M
2,Oliver,25,M
3,Roberta,17,F
4,Bell,70,F
5,Dalek,12,M
6,Andrews,10,M
7,Marty,35,M
8,"Anna Lammas",40,F
9,"Marcos Vinicius",16,M
10,Lara,32,F

If I try to run the command below, an error is raised.

C:\test\q -H "select * from ./people.csv where gender = 'F'"

Bad header row: Header must contain only strings and not numbers or empty strings: 'id,name,age,gender'
'id,name,age,gender': Column name cannot contain commas

However, this command works:

C:\test>q -H -d , "select * from ./people.csv where gender = 'F'"
3,Roberta,17,F
4,Bell,70,F
8,Anna Lammas,40,F
10,Lara,32,F

Well, if a CSV file is, by default, comma separated, q should identify the first row as comma separated too, I think.

Thanks!