CSV
Comma-Separated Values (RFC 4180)
Adopt
Formal standard
IETF (RFC 4180)
Since 2005
Judgement: Adopt
Universal flat file; ugly but ubiquitous.
Plain-text tabular format. RFC 4180 specifies a baseline; in practice every tool has its own dialect for quoting, escaping, and line endings.
Loved and hated in equal measure: terrible for nested data, perfect for spreadsheets, mandatory in data lake on-ramps.
At a glance
- Category
- File Formats
- Governance
- IETF (RFC 4180)
- Status
- Stable; the lowest common denominator for tabular data
- First released
- 2005
Links
Related standards
Other standards in File Formats.
- AVRO — Apache Avro
- JSON — JavaScript Object Notation
- PARQUET — Apache Parquet
- XML — Extensible Markup Language
- YAML — YAML Ain't Markup Language
- ORC — Apache ORC (Optimized Row Columnar)
- Lance
See CSV in context
Open the interactive Data Landscape to compare CSV against every other open standard, or grab the raw JSON. Spotted something wrong? Open an issue.