2020.2 not supporting Dash character in csv outputs

[wwatson]

We are seeing the dash Character being changed to a question mark in the column headings in CSV output files since we upgraded to 2020.2.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

[OllieClarke]

Hey @wwatson it looks like you're using a different type of dash from a hyphen. When I output an em dash or an en dash then I get those question marks

this is using the ISO 8859-1 Latin I Code Page (the default for a csv)

However, if you change this code page to Unicode UTF-8 then the em or en dashes will be maintained

like this:

Hope that helps,

Ollie

[wwatson]

Something changed with 2020.2 though as I was not getting this issue before I upgraded. I have a case open with support.

[wwatson · Accepted solution]

Response from Alteryx Support:

Hi William,

Thanks for the response. In testing on 2020.1, it appears em and en dashes via ISO-8859 encoding were being output as hyphens to CSV. In 2020.2, those characters are properly being returned as entered and as such require a different encoding (e.g. UTF). If the intention is to have em and en dashes in the output, utilize UTF encoding. If the intention is to have hyphens in the output, utilize such character within the workflow.

Thanks for following up.