Ragged rows
What they are and how to fix them
What are ragged rows?
Ragged rows have more or fewer columns than the header or other rows. They break parsers, shift columns in spreadsheets, and make analysis wrong. RxLint detects uneven rows and applies automatic parsing repair for high-confidence split-row patterns, so you can fix remaining structure issues before importing or sharing.
Example data with this issue
| id | name | score | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice | 95 | |
| 2 | Bob | 88 | extra |
| 3 | Carol |
Frequently asked questions
What causes ragged rows?
Common causes: manual editing, copy-paste from different sources, merged cells exported from spreadsheets, or scripts that append columns inconsistently.
How does RxLint help with ragged rows?
RxLint shows exactly which rows have the wrong number of columns. For high-confidence malformed continuation rows, RxLint can automatically repair parsing by merging split row pairs before you review and fix any remaining mismatches.