What does HackerNews think of csvtk?

I recommend everyone checkout the very cool csvtk by the amazing bioinformstician Shen Wei

https://github.com/shenwei356/csvtk

I like the intent "Easy-to-Write, Easy-to-Read", but the contents from the README leave much to be desired. There are far too many corner cases which the README doesn't address (many already mentioned below), and I can think of more, like, how does a parser know "city: Halifax" as "key: Value" and not just value="city: Halifax"?

Even if a `spec` is created which clearly defines these cases and standardizes how they should be handled, does it qualify to be called CSV 1.1 (or 2.0? really, as it probably won't play nice with existing CSV 1.0 implementations). It is almost as-good-as creating a new format altogether. And there are many to complete with.

I also wonder if it REALLY solves the problems it aims to solve (even if the tech specs were in place). CSV in any form is not human-friendly. This is especially true when you have wide columns (say >30). Even if the records were spaced-out in a human-friendly way in STATE-1, editing records where values are of highly varying width (within a single column) will soon mess the justification when you get to STATE-2. If you skip the requirement for `fixed-number-of-fields` and `key:value` style named values; that messes readability (by humans) even more!

I've had good success with `reading` CSVs using the `csvtk` (https://github.com/shenwei356/csvtk). It provides excellent support for pretty-printing CSVs, filtering select fields etc. `writing` is still a pain, but I still feel spreadsheets are the way to go. They have been around for decades. Its sad if the formatting by specific tools is screwing CSVs, but, solving the composition/modification requirement purely by way of formatted-plain-text is a really tall ask.