Comma-Separated Values or Character-Separated Values (CSV) is a standard "flat file database" format for storing tabular data in plain text, consisting of an optional header row that lists the table fields delimited by commas or tabs or other delimiter character, followed by one or more rows (newline separated) representing the table records as delimited lists of the values. Newlines and separator characters can appear within (quoted) fields.
CSV is a file format involving a plain text file with information separated by delimiters with the purpose of storing data in a table-structured format. CSV (comma separated values) files traditionally and most commonly use a comma delimiter (hence the name), but other characters can be used, such as semi-colons, tabs, pipe symbols (|), etc.
The MIME type for CSV files is text/csv.
Information is often stored in CSV format to make it easy to transfer tables of data between applications. Each row of a table is represented as a list of plain text (human-readable) values with a delimiter character between each discrete piece of data. Values may be enclosed in quotes, which is required if they contain the delimiter as a value. The first row of data often contains headers of table's columns, which describe the meaning of the data in each column.
Example
Tabular format
+-------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
| Time | Temperature | Humidity | Description |
+-------|-------------|----------|----------------------+
| 08:00 | 70 | 35 | Sunny and Clear |
| 11:45 | 94 | 90 | Hazy, Hot, and Humid |
| 14:30 | 18 | | Freezing |
+-------+-------------+----------+----------------------+
CSV format
Time,Temperature,Humidity,Description
08:00,70,35,"Sunny and Clear"
11:45,94,90,"Hazy, Hot, and Humid"
14:30,18,,Freezing
In this example, the first row of CSV data serves as the "header" which describes the corresponding data below it. Each successive line of the CSV file would then neatly fit into the same field as the first line. There is no inherent way to describe within a CSV file whether the first row is a header row or not.
Note that empty fields (fields with no available data, such as the third field in the last line) are place-held with commas so that the fields that follow may be correctly placed.
Questions tagged csv are expected to relate to programming in some way, for example, parsing/importing CSV files or creating them programmatically.
Related links:
- What to set as mimetype for csv files to open in spreadsheet applications
- RFC 4180 (describes official CSV format)
- CSV file checker
