Hello Prof Wise,

About

Based on the header (i.e. top) line, make sure that the file is a tab-separated format file Also based on the header line, report any lines that do not have the same number of cells. (Cells are allowed be empty.)

How can we distinguish if the line is separated using space or if it's just a phrase within spaces? Cos there are different ways to handle data according to these 2 conditions.

Let me take a simple example:

Entity Country Code

Is it three columns but be separated by 2 spaces? Or it is one column but just 2 spaces in it.

Thanks

Based on my understanding, columns within a file are separated by the tab character ("\t"), rather than by spaces. While spaces may exist within a column, they are not employed to partition columns. Instead, spaces are utilized within a column to separate individual words or elements.

"Runzhi Zhao" [email protected] wrote:

Based on my understanding, columns within a file are separated by the tab character ("\t"), rather than by spaces. While spaces may exist within a column, they are not employed to partition columns. Instead, spaces are utilized within a column to separate individual words or elements.

Hi Runzhi That is correct. Tabs are simply replacing the commas that are used in the .csv format. Spaces can appear in either format, and are just parts of strings; never separators.

Cheers MichaelW 👨‍🎨