What is a CSV File? CSV File Definition.

CSV File Defined:

Definition 1: A CSV file is commonly described as a ‘Comma Delimited File’ or a ‘Character Separated File’. The second description is more accurate since any character including the comma, can be used to delineate each piece of data. For example, a TSV file, ‘commonly known as a ‘Tab Delimited File’, is really just a special case of a CSV file. Since a CSV file is a simple text file (ASCII or Unicode) it can be easily opened by Notepad.exe which is included in all versions of MS Windows. A typical CSV file, where a comma is used to distinguish each record, looks like this in Notepad.exe:

Or if the "|" bar character is used to separate the data, it would instead look like below:

Definition 2: A CSV file is a text file that has a specific format which allows for the saving of textual information/data in an organized fashion. The format, known as a flat table, is very simple. Each row (paragraph) contains one record of information; each record can contain multiple pieces of data (fields) each separated by a specific character. The character used to distinguish each piece of data within each record is most commonly a comma, but can be any character.