comma-separated values
Sign in to saveAlso known as CSV, .csv, CSV file
file format used to store data
Key facts
- Filename extension
- .csv
- Internet media type
- text/csv
- Uniform type identifier uti
- public.comma-separated-values-text
- Uti conformation
- public.delimited-values-text
- Type of format
- multi-platform, serial data streams
- Container for
- database information organized as field separated lists
- Standard
- RFC 4180
via Wikipedia infobox
~9 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Comma-separated values (CSV) is a plain text data format for storing tabular data where the fields (values) of a record are separated by a comma and each record is a line (i.e. newline separated). CSV is commonly-used in software that generally deals with tabular data such as a database or a spreadsheet. Benefits cited for using CSV include simplicity of use and human readability. CSV is a form of delimiter-separated values. A CSV file is a file that contains CSV-formatted data.
CSV is not limited to a particular character encoding but should be and is commonly used with UTF-8, particularly because it does not provide a way to indicate the character encoding.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “comma-separated values” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.