NOTE: I (Gerald Bauer) am happy to work on a better (alternate) csv library for ruby, BUT unfortunately for now I have first to figure out how to survive and earn some money. unfortunately, ruby is no longer (never was really) in demand over here (in austria). thus, if you want to see progress - please ping me (gerald.bauer @ gmail.com) and your support is more than welcome.
Gem Family
csvreader - read tabular data in the comma-separated values (csv) format the right way (uses best practices out-of-the-box with zero-configuration)
csvjson - read tabular data in the CSV <3 JSON format, that is, comma-separated values CSV (line-by-line) records with javascript object notation (JSON) encoding rules
csvyaml - read tabular data in the CSV <3 YAML format, that is, comma-separated values (CSV) line-by-line records with yaml ain't markup language (YAML) encoding rules
csvhuman - read tabular data in the CSV Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL) format, that is, comma-separated values (CSV) line-by-line records with a hashtag (meta data) line using the Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL) rules
tabreader - read in tabular datafiles in text in the tabular (TAB) format
csvpack - tools 'n' scripts for working with tabular data packages using comma-separated values (CSV) datafiles in text with meta info (that is, schema, datatypes, ..) in datapackage.json; download, read into and query CSV datafiles with your SQL database (e.g. SQLite, PostgreSQL, ...) of choice and much more
Typed Structs & More
csvrecord - read in comma-separated values (csv) records with typed structs / schemas
(Command Line) Tools & More
csvutils - tools 'n' scripts for working with comma-separated values (csv) datafiles - the world's most popular tabular data interchange format in text