Victor Powell has released CSV Fingerprints, a tool for spotting errors in CSV files, such as instances “when the data itself has a comma in it.” As Powell describes,
The idea is to provide a birdseye view of the file without too much distracting detail. The idea is similar to Tufte’s Image Quilts…a qualitative view, as opposed to a rendering of the data in the file themselves. In this sense, the CSV Fingerprint is a sort of meta visualization.
Users can use the browser-based software, or download the source code from GitHub.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Jacqueline Whyte Appleby, Ryan Clement, Nickoal Eichmann, Joe Grobelny, Jan Lampaert, Anu Paul, Sarah Severson, Rebecca Stuhr, Amy Wickner, Anna-Sophia Zingarelli-Sweet (Editors-at-large for the week), Zach Coble (Editor for the week), Sarah Potvin (Site Editor), and Roxanne Shirazi and Caro Pinto (dh+lib Review Editors).