unflatten: How to include literal commas and semi-colons in a plain array of strings?

[duncandewhurst]

From GFDRR/rdls-spreadsheet-template#3 (comment), what is the correct syntax to produce the following JSON output?

{
  "authors": [
    "Smith, John",
    "Bloggs, Joe"
   ]
}

[duncandewhurst]

I think I found the relevant bit of code, there doesn't seem to be any support for escaping separators:

flatten-tool/flattentool/input.py

Lines 79 to 99 in dad9837

	elif type_string in ("array", "array_array", "string_array", "number_array"):
	value = str(value)
	if type_string == "number_array":
	try:
	if "," in value:
	return [
	[Decimal(y) for y in x.split(",")] for x in value.split(";")
	]
	else:
	return [Decimal(x) for x in value.split(";")]
	except (TypeError, ValueError, InvalidOperation):
	warn(
	_(
	'Non-numeric value "{}" found in number array column, returning as string array instead).'
	).format(value),
	DataErrorWarning,
	)
	if "," in value:
	return [x.split(",") for x in value.split(";")]
	else:
	return value.split(";")

[duncandewhurst]

Confirmed that this isn't currently possible. In RDLS, for the time being, we can inform spreadsheet users that values must not contain semicolons or commas.