A text qualifier is a character used to distinguish the point at which the contents of a text field should begin and end. Say you need to import a text file that is comma delimited (separated by commas), and one of fields is a description that could potentially contain a comma. You can use a text qualifier to show that the comma is meant to be included within the text field-- not to be used as a separator.
Example of a Text Qualifier:
The file to be parsed looks like this:
Email Address, First Name, Job Title
[email protected], John, CEO
[email protected], Jane, Director, HR
The above example file would be parsed out like this:
Jane's title is technically "Director, HR." But, because we're using a comma delimited list, "Director" and "HR" will each fall into their own columns. To avoid this separation, we can use a single or double quote text qualifier to designate that "Director, HR" belongs as a single unit in the Job Title Field.
The file using text qualifiers looks like this:
Email Address, First Name, "Job Title"
[email protected], John, "CEO"
[email protected], Jane, "Director, HR"
The above example file would be parsed out like this:
