14.2 CSV (Comma-Separated Values) format (spreadsheets)
Description
This article is from the Spreadsheets FAQ, by Russell Schulz casfaq@locutus.ofB.ORG with numerous contributions by others.
14.2 CSV (Comma-Separated Values) format (spreadsheets)
Stores: Values
this is generally not a good format, as it has two special cases
(commas and quotation marks) that are often misimplemented. it
can work very well for purely numeric data, which use neither of
these two characters -- unless your radix separator is the comma,
as is still common in some parts of Europe. in these cases,
software often uses a semicolon (;) instead of the comma (,) to
separate fields.
each column is separated by commas. each row is separated by local
end-of-line, most commonly ASCII LF (10), ASCII CR (13), or ASCII CRLF
pair (13,10).
if a comma is needed, the entire field will be surrounded by
quotation marks (though there is software that gets even this
wrong -- the Windows NT 3.51 Event Log export function is one
example). some packages enclose any string value (and even numeric
values) in quotation marks. to represent a quotation mark within
a field, double it (don't use `\"') and quote the whole field.
e.g., (examples marked with [*] are unusual)
First,Second,3,"Fourth, and Second-Last",Fifth
"First","Second",3,"Fourth, and Second-Last","Fifth"
[*] "even","numeric","fields","are","in","quotes","1","2","3"
"this field has a ""quoted"" word","yes, and this one has a comma"
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