**The plaintext relational data storage format.** CSV stands for "Comma Separated Value" or "Common Separated Variable". It's the simplest possible data dump for structured data (arguably aside from [[JSON]]). The structure, though, is very limited to simple, flat tables. CSV does not lend itself to modeling hierarchical data (like JSON or [[XML]]) or object-oriented data. CSV files can have different "flavors", but each of which has at least these two things: 1. The delimiter - traditionally a comma 2. The new line indicator - traditionally a carriage return/"new line" character 3. Often there will also be a way to "escape" these characters to allow for their use _in_ the data. A common method is the use of a "text qualifier". There are a few different standards for CSV. - Internet W3C tabular standard - RFC 4180 standard # Example ``` This is a single element, "this, too, is a single element", "This element, named ""bob"", is also one element" ``` # Issues CSV files contain **only** data. There is no standard universal method of wrapping up metadata into a CSV file. This means there is no way to explicitly "[[Data Types|type]]" a given field. There **may or may not be headers** naming the columns. Parsing issues are common between CSV programs that use slightly different flavors. The data are not always _that_ human-readable. Open a CSV in Notepad or VS Code and see how that goes. **** ## Source ## Related - [[JSON]] - [[Relational Databases]] - [[Plain Text Durability]] - [[Data Serialization]] - [[Data Serialization Methods]]