Keep SKU leading zeros when checking a CSV

Understand why 00123 and 123 are different identifiers, spot whitespace and case collisions, and inspect a CSV without rewriting the original.

An identifier is not a number

A supplier might use 00123 for a tea refill and 123 for a travel mug. Treating both as numbers destroys that distinction. The SKU checker keeps the strings as supplied; it cannot restore zeros that were already lost before you exported the file.

Three different questions

• Exact duplicates: did precisely the same identifier appear more than once?
• Whitespace collisions: could ABC-1 and ABC-1 be accidental variants of the same identifier?
• Case collisions: does your system distinguish ABC-1 from abc-1?

Answer the last two using your own business rules. Potential collisions are a reason to inspect records, not permission to delete them automatically.

A safe inspection workflow

Keep an untouched copy of the source. Load it, select the correct SKU column, inspect both original values and record numbers, and export the issue report. Correct the source deliberately and run another check. A quoted description spanning two physical lines still belongs to one CSV record.

Download the synthetic SKU example to try exact duplicates, case differences, leading zeros and an empty identifier.