Re: Tool converts records to XML

 Cordially agreed, Michael, and I just wanted to post the same remark, when I saw you already did it. Small supplement: Using the csv:doc function, you need not read the file content. And the separator is controlled by the 'separator' option. Thus:
csv:doc($uri, map{'separator':'tab', 'header':'yes'})

gives the parsed document. A huge advantage to have both pieces of cake - have the parsed document, and find oneself in XQuery, the master language for evaluating tree-structured information. For example, in order to get a frequency distribution of the "date" field:
declare variable $uri external;csv:doc($uri, map{'separator':'tab', 'header':'yes'})! (for $dateElem in //date    group by $date := $dateElem order by $date    return $date||' #'||count($dateElem))
=>
1988 #12019 #2

Kind regards,Hans-Jürgen
    Am Dienstag, 15. November 2022 um 15:54:16 MEZ hat C. M. Sperberg-McQueen <[email protected]> Folgendes geschrieben:  
 
 
Hans-Juergen Rennau <[email protected]> writes:

> Roger, I would find it interesting to compare an awk solution with an
> XQuery one, also considering aspects like clarity and
> extensibility. Especially interesting as the potential of XQuery for
> tool building is by and large ignored.

Agreed!

> ...
>
> PS. Example of an XQuery-based solution:
>
> declare variable $uri external;
> declare variable $sep external := '&#x9;'; 
> <document>{
>    let $lines := unparsed-text-lines($uri)
>    let $names := $lines => head() => tokenize($sep)
>    for $line in tail($lines) return
>    <row>{
>        for $field at $pos in tokenize($line, $sep) return
>            element {$names[$pos]} {$field}
>    }</row>
> }</document>

This is good (and should work anywhere), but after spending a little
time on my own CSV parsing routines I realized that in BaseX, the
simplest thing to do is just to call

    csv:parse(unparsed-text($uri), map { 'header': 'yes'})

That is for comma-separated values; I think for tab-separated values one
would have to specify an additional option.

I don't have time to check, but I have a dim recollection that eXist
also has a function for reading CSV.

-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com