Reading a CSV file in .NET?

A choice, without using third-party components, is to use the class Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.visualbasic.fileio.textfieldparser.aspx) . It provides all the functions for parsing CSV. It is sufficient to import the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly.

var parser = new Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser(file);
parser.TextFieldType = Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FieldType.Delimited;
parser.SetDelimiters(new string[] { ";" });

while (!parser.EndOfData)
{
    string[] row = parser.ReadFields();
    /* do something */
}