I am creating a csv consumer with Java. 

I am trying to decide the best way to implement the csv parser. I have one field or column that contains an action, this can be either "Rename" or "Move" at the moment by Java code allows mixed case of letters, and blank space at either end. To be precise I do myString.trim().toUpperCase() on the parsed string. 

This makes my code less brittle and more robust, but its not "fail fast". 

Opinions ?