IMPORTING DELIMITED ASCII (GENERIC)

If a file to be imported is recognized as containing ASCII but is not recognized as XML, you are always given an opportunity to select the Generic CSV (character separated values) import strategy. This strategy supports the importing of a wide variety of files that employ a separator character for fields on a single line, and where each line represents an event. However, if other, more specific, importing strategies are offered, you should consider whether they are more appropriate.

In keeping with RFC 4180 (the standard for "comma separated values"), it is possible to quote both line continuations and the separator character. The support exceeds that in RFC 4180 in several ways (for example, the separator does not have to be a comma), but follows the standard in supporting only ASCII (not full Unicode) characters.

To use the generic CSV strategy effectively, the following must be true of the file.

If you select this strategy, you are then asked to choose the following:

After import, every apparently numeric attribute of every event type (other than the timestamp attribute) becomes a sample stream that can be manipulated in TuningFork. The importer can be fooled by attributes that appear numeric but turn out not to be later in the import. This property may cause occasional problems with this strategy.