How to read a specific row/column/cell value from a .csv file with arduino?

Projects General Guidance
1

I'm making an arduino weather station.
I log data into a .csv file on SD, from various sensors, including a real time clock.

I want to read the sensor values back off that csv file, select values and lines not all of them, search for historical sensor data within a user specified range in that .csv file.

In essence, I need to code
"compare the value in row 1, column 3, to user specified conditions, if it meets them, add the value to a variable: if not, move on the row 2, column 3 and repeat, until you run out of file"

Simple enough coding, a for loop is probably best ... except how do I code what single row column or cell to read?

Do I use a special character at the end of each line to allow arduino to differentiate the rows? reference the commas as column deliminators?
In which case I'll have to 'count' how many commas we pass to get the cell number?

I can read off the 'whole' .csv file to serial ... that doesn't help.

Is this even possible with arduino, OR, should I give up on that notion, just use arduino weather station to record, and take the .csv into a computer and use/write another program on my laptop to utilise the data?

I don't think Excel for instance can do what I'm wanting to do with the data afterwards ... but to explain that I don't want to write out here an essay of project theories, which are extraneous to my central question ie the specific reading of data from a .csv ...

2

Read up on parsing a file.
You’ll be separating fields with a comma.
If you use c-strings (you should), the strtok() and related / associated functions are where you will be going.

I’m sure there will be some previous threads here if you scratch around.

3

The special character at the end of the line is called "newline" and it is written as '\n' you may also see carriage-return which is '\r'.

The Arduino cannot hold the entire file in memory like Excel can. But scanning the file counting lines and commas is easy and fast.

4

A beginners guide to the esp8266
Later chapter on datalogger has an example