fix(rag): escape Excel Markdown table cells - #2528

AgentScope Version

2.0.8 (main, base commit 41ba021)

Description

ExcelParser renders a sheet through its own cell formatter, _fmt at src/agentscope/rag/_parser/_excel.py:419, which escapes the pipe character and nothing else. Two ordinary kinds of spreadsheet cell corrupt the table it produces.

A cell containing a line break (alt+enter in Excel) ends the Markdown row early. _extract_table_data normalises CRLF to LF at _excel.py:74 and keeps the break, so the text after it lands on its own physical line and the row is cut short there.

A cell containing a backslash in front of a pipe loses a column. Path \| label is escaped to Path \\| label, and Markdown reads \\ as a literal backslash and the | after it as an unescaped column separator, so one cell renders as two.

WordParser and PPTParser are not affected: both render through the shared _format_markdown_table_cell in src/agentscope/rag/_parser/_utils.py:50, which escapes backslashes and pipes and turns line breaks into <br>. The Excel path predates that helper and was never switched over to it.

Repro on main, with a sheet whose cells are A|B, Path \| label, 1|2 and Line 1\nLine 2:

| A\|B | Path \\| label |
| --- | --- |
| 1\|2 | Line 1
Line 2 |

After this change:

| A\|B | Path \\\| label |
| --- | --- |
| 1\|2 | Line 1<br>Line 2 |

Change

_fmt calls _format_markdown_table_cell instead of its own single replace. The [A1] cell-coordinate prefix and the table_format="json" path are untouched, and cells with no pipe, backslash or line break render exactly as before.

Tests

Added ExcelParserTest.test_markdown_table_escapes_special_cells, which mirrors the Word and PPT tests of the same name and asserts the whole parsed Section dump. It fails on main (Path \\| label and the split row) and passes with the change.

python -m pytest tests/rag_parser_test.py -q
# 44 passed

python -m pytest tests/ -k rag -q
# 228 passed, 1 skipped

pre-commit run --files src/agentscope/rag/_parser/_excel.py tests/rag_parser_test.py
# all hooks passed

Run on macOS with Python 3.11, pandas 3.0.5 and openpyxl 3.1.5. The new test uses only _make_xlsx_simple, the helper the existing Excel tests already build workbooks with, so it needs nothing that CI does not already install.

Checklist

Please check the following items before code is ready to be reviewed.

• An issue has been created for this PR
• I have read the CONTRIBUTING.md
• Docstrings are in Google style
• Related documentation has been updated (e.g. links, examples, etc.) in documentation repository
• Code is ready for review