The comma-separated values (CSV) file format is a tabular data format that has field (computer science) separated by the comma grapheme and quoted by the double quote character. If a field s value contains a double quote character it is escape character with a pair of double quote characters.

The CSV file format does not require a specific character encoding, byte order or line terminator format.

It is often not required by Software to have fields quoted unless they contain a comma character.

A similar format is tab-separated values, or .tsv Computer file, is a Delimited data format that has fields separated by the tab character. Application support and usage is similar to a comma-separated values file.

=Formal specifications=

While no formal specification for CSV exists, there are several informal documents describing the format ([http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch05s02.html 1], [http://www.ricebridge.com/products/csvman/reference.htm 2], [http://www.edoceo.com/utilis/csv-file-format.php 3] and [http://www.creativyst.com/Doc/Articles/CSV/CSV01.htm 4]). The closest thing to a formal specification is [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4180.txt RFC 4180].

=MIME type=

There are several informal .

=Example=

Chicane , Love on the Run , Knight Rider , This field contains a comma, but it doesn t matter as the field is quoted Samuel Barber , Adagio for Strings , Classical , This field contains a double quote character, , but it doesn t matter as it is escaped

=Application support=

The CSV file format is a very simple data file format that is supported by almost all . Any programming language that has input/output and string processing functionality will be able to read and write CSV files.

CSV is similar in ubiquity for tabular data as ASCII files are for text data.

=Programming language tools=

=Utilities=

The [http://www.ioplex.com/~miallen/libmba/dl/examples/csvprint.c csvprint] utility will reformat CSV input based on a format string. This can be useful for reordering fields or generating source code or tables as illustrated in the following example:

$ csvprint data.csv { %0, %1, %2, %3 }, { 0xC0000008, 0x00060001, NT_STATUS_INVALID_HANDLE, The handle is invalid. },

=Software Products=