Option liberal_parsing¶ ↑

Specifies the boolean or hash value that determines whether CSV will attempt to parse input not conformant with RFC 4180, such as double quotes in unquoted fields.

Default value:

CSV::DEFAULT_OPTIONS.fetch(:liberal_parsing) # => false

For the next two examples:

str = 'is,this "three, or four",fields'

Without liberal_parsing:

# Raises CSV::MalformedCSVError (Illegal quoting in str 1.)
CSV.parse_line(str)

With liberal_parsing:

ary = CSV.parse_line(str, liberal_parsing: true)
ary # => ["is", "this \"three", " or four\"", "fields"]

Use the backslash_quote sub-option to parse values that use a backslash to escape a double-quote character. This causes the parser to treat \" as if it were "".

For the next two examples:

str = 'Show,"Harry \"Handcuff\" Houdini, the one and only","Tampa Theater"'

With liberal_parsing, but without the backslash_quote sub-option:

# Incorrect interpretation of backslash; incorrectly interprets the quoted comma as a field separator.
ary = CSV.parse_line(str, liberal_parsing: true)
ary # => ["Show", "\"Harry \\\"Handcuff\\\" Houdini", " the one and only\"", "Tampa Theater"]
puts ary[1] # => "Harry \"Handcuff\" Houdini

With liberal_parsing and its backslash_quote sub-option:

ary = CSV.parse_line(str, liberal_parsing: { backslash_quote: true })
ary # => ["Show", "Harry \"Handcuff\" Houdini, the one and only", "Tampa Theater"]
puts ary[1] # => Harry "Handcuff" Houdini, the one and only