[CSV-128] CSVFormat.EXCEL should ignore empty header names

• Type: Bug
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.0
• Fix Version/s: 1.1
• Component/s: Parser

Environment

Apache Maven 3.2.3 (33f8c3e1027c3ddde99d3cdebad2656a31e8fdf4; 2014-08-11T16:58:10-04:00)
Maven home: C:\Java\apache-maven-3.2.3
Java version: 1.7.0_65, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_65\jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 7", version: "6.1", arch: "amd64", family: "windows"

• Assignee: Gary D. Gregory
• Reporter: Gary D. Gregory
• Created: 27/Aug/14 02:28
• Updated: 27/Aug/14 14:14
• Resolved: 27/Aug/14 14:14

Description

I have an Excel file with a first row with N column names
If there are additional columns that are not labeled, Excel exports empty columns. For example:
A,B,C,,
a,b,c,d,e

This causes an IAE like:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The header contains a duplicate name: "" in [A, B, C, , ]
	at org.apache.commons.csv.CSVParser.initializeHeader(CSVParser.java:368)
	at org.apache.commons.csv.CSVParser.<init>(CSVParser.java:248)
	at org.apache.commons.csv.CSVParser.parse(CSVParser.java:206)

It seems like the simplest solution is to ignore empty column names, such that they cannot be addressable and not attempt to index them.