In readdlm (and readcsv), the quotes option allows for columns that are enclosed within double-quote (”) characters to contain new lines and column delimiters. But if there is a space before/after the delimiter, then readdlm either errors (unexpected character ' ' after quoted field) or doesn't parse the file as intended (number of rows is wrong), respectively:
results in a 2×2 Array{String,2}, good!
results in a 2×3 Array{String,2}, bad...
Because csv files are human-readable and humans usually put a space after a comma, maybe readdlm (or at least readcsv) should ignore spaces around delimiters?