Special considerations

Encoding

Once the data is read, it is converted from the encoding given as a parameter to the current encoding (either FE or BE, as stored in \TYPO3\CMS\Lang\LanguageService::$charSet), if they are not the same. If the encoding parameter is left empty, no conversion takes place.

CSV data structure

Beware of incomplete data in the CSV file. It will generate variable results depending on the position of the missing data. Consider the following CSV data:

foo;12;aaa
bar;42
baz;;bbb
 ;;ccc
36

Empty columns before the last one will be returned as empty strings. Missing columns at the end of each row simply do not exist. The above data will be returned as the following PHP array:

'result' => [
   [
      'foo',
      '12',
      'aaa'
   ],
   // Missing columns at the end are totally missing in the result
   [
      'bar',
      '42'
   ],
   // Missing columns before the last one are returned as empty strings...
   [
      'baz',
      '',
      'bbb'
   ],
   // ...but spaces are preserved
   [
      ' ',
      '',
      'ccc'
   ],
   [
      '36'
   ]
)