NAME
    Text::ECSV - Extended CSV manipulation routines

SYNOPSIS
        use Text::ECSV;
        $ecsv    = Text::ECSV->new ();         # create a new object
        $line    = 'id=3,name=Text::ECSV,shot_desc=Extended CSV manipulation routines';
        $status  = $ecsv->parse ($line);       # parse a CSV string into fields
                                               #    and name value pairs
        %columns = $ecsv->fields_hash ();      # get the parsed field hash
        $column  = $ecsv->field_named('id');   # get field value for given name
        
    $ecsv->combine('b' => 2, 'a' => 1, 'c' => 3, );
        # ok($ecsv->string eq 'b=2,a=1,c=3');

DESCRIPTION
    " use base 'Text::CSV_XS'; " => see Text::CSV_XS.

    Roland Giersig had a presentation at YAPC 2007 called 'Techniques for
    Remote System-Monitoring'. He was explaining his search after a good
    logging format or how to store continuous flow of data in a most usable
    form. XML? YAML? CSV? XML is nice but for a machines not for humans,
    YAML is nice for both but it's hard to grep. CSV is readable and
    grep-able but not too flexible. So what is the conclusion? ECSV is like
    a CSV but in each comma separated field the name of the column is set.
    This gives a flexibility to skip, reorder, add the fields. All the
    information is stored per line so it's easy to grep. Also it's easy to
    compare two records by md5-ing the lines or doing string eq.

PROPERTIES
  fields_hash
    Holds hash reference to the resulting hash constructed by "parse()".

  dup_keys_strategy
    If set and a dupplicate key names occure in a parsed line, this strategy
    is called with "->($name, $old_value, $value)".

    Can be used for duplicate keys to join values to one string, or push
    them to an array or to treat them how ever is desired. By default values
    overwrite each other.

METHODS
  field_named($name)
    Return field with $name.

  parse()
    In aditional to the "SUPER::parse()" functionality it decodes name value
    pairs to fill in "fields_hash".

  combine($key => $value, ...)
    The function joins all $key.'='.$value and then calls "SUPER::combine"
    constructing a CSV from the arguments, returning success or failure.

AUTHOR
    Jozef Kutej, "<jkutej@cpan.org>", thanks to Roland Giersig
    "<RGiersig@cpan.org>" for the idea.

BUGS
    Please report any bugs or feature requests to "bug-text-ecsv at
    rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at
    <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Text-ECSV>. I will be
    notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your
    bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT
    You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

        perldoc Text::ECSV

    You can also look for information at:

    *   RT: CPAN's request tracker

        <http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Text-ECSV>

    *   AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

        <http://annocpan.org/dist/Text-ECSV>

    *   CPAN Ratings

        <http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/Text-ECSV>

    *   Search CPAN

        <http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-ECSV>

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE
    Copyright 2008 Jozef Kutej, all rights reserved.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.