# Importing data from a CSV file — a string is being converted to a number

I'm very much a newbie, so please forgive any errors or stupidity.

I have a csv file named csvfile. Its, contents confirmed by me, by looking at the contents in a text viewer are:

234GJ,9060G,8096F,4162J


When I read this file into any other software -- say, R, Stata, or Excel, it results in four text items.

When I read it into Mathematica using

Import["csvfile", "CSV"]


I get a list that is a mix of strings and a number; after Flatten it becomes

{"234GJ", "9060G", 8096, "4162J"}


Can anyone tell my why this is happening?

Import["csvfile", "CSV", "Numeric" -> False] will stop it from interpreting elements as numbers, this can be found in CSV
• @mjchalk to be honest, I do not know what "F" means in this case, but at least it does not mean floating point number, because you can get integers from 123F and lower case "f" does nothing. The only documented formats are xxxD/dxxx and xxxE/exxx meaning exponential. – vapor Mar 1 '17 at 14:58