Lab Case · Safe

A semicolon CSV that can be safely normalized

The values are already correct; only the serialization format differs from a comma-separated destination.

Reproducible fixture
Issue: delimiterOutcome: repair allowedBusiness values changed: no

Fixture

name;price;sku
Blue Shirt;19.99;SKU-001
Red Shirt;24.50;SKU-002

What this case isolates

Every non-empty row contains three fields and the same semicolon separator. There are no broken quotes, duplicate headers, or width mismatches. That means the parser can identify the table without deciding what any value is supposed to mean.

Upload the fixture

The delimiter tool should identify semicolon-separated structure.

Review row width

The header and both data rows should all parse to three columns.

Download safe repair

The tool can re-serialize the same fields with commas and UTF-8 output.

Re-check the output

The corrected copy should parse as a comma-separated three-column CSV.

Why the repair is safe

The operation changes separators between already identified fields. It does not infer a price, SKU, product name, or missing value. Proper CSV serialization also quotes a field automatically if it contains a comma, so this is safer than raw Find & Replace.

What would make the same job unsafe?

If one row had a different width or an unclosed quoted field, the parser could no longer prove all field boundaries. CSVFixLab would then block repair instead of treating the delimiter as the only problem.

Decision: safe structural normalization. The original file should still be kept as a backup.

Lab fixture maintained with the CSVFixLab MVP test suite.