(C-S-V)

A file format used primarily to transfer basic data between databases and spreadsheets. Each line (up to the carriage return) is considered a record. Fields within each record are divided by a comma (or semi-colon if the originating local uses the comma as a period in currency -- resulting in conversion problems if you are not careful and don't know the delimiter being used).

Each line must have the same number of fields (commas). If a comma or leading and/or trailing blanks appear in any field value the field must be enclosed by quotes (") to indicate the information is data and not a field divider.

In some cases, particularly if the CSV file is output from a database, there will be a header row that starts the file. This header row will contain the database field names with a comma between.

More Information

• Wikipedia Comma-Separated Values page