Display CSV Files in an HTA

Over the last several weeks, I've been working extensively with comma-separated value (CSV) files. One simple example is the component I described in "Gathering File System Data" (October 2006, Instant-Doc 93451), FileDB.wsc, which saves information about files to a CSV file. CSV files are plain-text database files in which each line represents a record (row) that's divided into fields (columns), with commas separating data items from each other, as Figure 1 shows. The first line (sometimes called a header line) of the CSV file contains the field or column names, and subsequent lines contain the data. Double-quote characters define individual items in case a data item contains a comma. CSV files can contain an arbitrary number of lines, and they might not contain a header line that contains the field names. As I worked with the output from FileDB.wsc, I realized that an HTML application (HTA) would be an ideal way to quickly and easily view CSV files. Let's take a look at the HTA I wrote and see how the scripting behind it makes it work. . . .