Comma-Separated Values (CSV) File

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A Comma-Separated Values (CSV) File is a plaintext data file that follows some CSV file format.



References

2017

  • (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/comma-separated_values Retrieved:2017-9-8.
    • In computing, a comma-separated values (CSV) file stores tabular data (numbers and text) in plain text. Each line of the file is a data record. Each record consists of one or more fields, separated by commas. The use of the comma as a field separator is the source of the name for this file format.

      The CSV file format is not standardized. The basic idea of separating fields with a comma is clear, but that idea gets complicated when the field data may also contain commas or even embedded line-breaks. CSV implementations may not handle such field data, or they may use quotation marks to surround the field. Quotation does not solve everything: some fields may need embedded quotation marks, so a CSV implementation may include escape characters or escape sequences.

      In addition, the term "CSV" also denotes some closely related delimiter-separated formats that use different field delimiters. These include tab-separated values and space-separated values. A delimiter that is not present in the field data (such as tab) keeps the format parsing simple. These alternate delimiter-separated files are often even given a .csv extension despite the use of a non-comma field separator. This loose terminology can cause problems in data exchange. Many applications that accept CSV files have options to select the delimiter character and the quotation character.