selective quoting causes Excel to treat .csv as UTF-16 (.txt) on next save

[dholstius]

I'm using readr::write_csv to dump a comma-delimited file out for my Excel-using friend. A couple of cells have commas in the cell value, so those are escaped with double quotes. So far so good.

My friend opens the file and hits Ctrl-S, without making any edits.

Oddly, what Excel writes out is now delimited by tabs, not commas.

Digging a little deeper, I try the same thing myself, but "Save As" instead of Ctrl-S ... and see that Excel is suggesting "UTF-16 Unicode Text (.txt)" in the "Save As" dialog. WTF?

• csvclean (from csvkit) reports no errors in the file on disk.
• I'm on a Mac, so the line endings are not CRLF. But I can convert them to CRLF (using unix2dos) and the same thing happens.
• The problem is avoided by using base::write.csv with quote = TRUE.

Can we have a quote = option in write_csv? Maybe the default should be FALSE. But why not allow it?

I like the efficiency of selective quoting but we have to share the world with Excellers.

Thanks!

[jimhester]

#653 also suggests a quote option.

[dholstius]

Thanks @jimhester, +1 for #653 then.

Should it default to TRUE in write_excel_csv, even if it defaults to FALSE in write_csv?