My first search for this turned up more information about the function that is being used, read_csv.pro. However, all links are essentially printouts of the code, and hint that the first row must be a header row. I'm not sure if the version of this function that we have is exactly the same.
http://home.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~hoekstra/downloads/read_csv.pro
My problem is that my csv file has hexadecimal numbers, and read_csv just happens to be interpreting values with an E in the 2nd from the last digit incorrectly. I'd like it to just read in the entire file as strings and let me do the string to number conversion. There's a "STRINGS" keyword in the listing, but it's not clear how to use it. It looks like you just have to say strings=something, some examples seem to show strings=strings (it doesn't look like the /STRINGS nomenclature that goes with IDL operations).
Then, this forum thread says use readcol if you want to do everything by hand, or just use Readf or read_data_file which I guess will treat the csv file like an array:
http://www.rhinocerus.net/forum/lang-idl-pvwave/118138-reading-csv-file.html
