CSV, or files with “comma separated values”, is a simple format that everyone should be able to handle. Certainly you’d think so except nothing is ever that straightforward and if you’ve ever spent time trying to work with these files and having to deal with all the problems inherent to this format then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. In our industry, localization, the number of problems can even increase because we also have to deal with converting the content from one language to another. I also wondered if there is a standard for CSV and the closest things to one is more of a recommendation, called RFC 4180. It doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2005 and doesn’t take account of many of the problems that can be caused by not managing these files carefully.
So what sort of things are we talking about? Here’s a few…
After I did my last studies, apart from all the endless mandatory HR type training we have to endure these days, I thought that would be it for any sort of formal training for me. In fact the main reason for me doing my last formal studies, 
Whilst I would definitely not claim to be an expert, writing this blog has allowed me to learn a reasonable amount about XML over the years. Most of the articles I’ve written have been about explaining how to manage the many amazing features in the filetypes that are supported by Trados Studio… and of course how to deal with the many changes over the years as the filetypes have become more and more sophisticated catering for the demands of our customers and the changes in the technologies applied to XML in general. The result of these changes has led to some… let’s say… less than user friendly interfaces and features and you’d certainly be forgiven if you thought things were becoming a little chaotic!
Whilst the solving of regular expressions with ChatGPT seems like a great way to give yourself superpowers I have stayed away from writing about this usecase till now. Yes, ChatGPT is great for those simple things that anyone with some basic knowledge could probably write themselves in the time it took to explain what was wanted. But I like regular expressions… I’m definitely not a real expert, but I do like to play around with them and would consider myself above an average user. So when I decided to test ChatGPT with a regular expression I asked it to solve something I have never been able to achieve on my own. In fact I have never seen anyone else do this either… although I’m certain there are many people out there who would be very capable of doing it. But when I’ve asked I have never had a satisfactory solution without using code, or without using multiple search & replace operations.
I’m sure everyone reading this is no stranger to the often completely unintelligible error messages that can be generated when software goes wrong! You can even find in the most voted for ideas in the RWS Community ideas platform that is related to just that, “