Talk:Comma-separated values
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Non-standard CSV files vs. DSV files
[edit]Comma-separated values § Specification says
Within these general constraints, many variations are in use. Therefore, without additional information (such as whether RFC 4180 is honored), a file claimed simply to be in "CSV" format is not fully specified.
It used to speak of delimiters other than commas as an example of a variation, and said that
As a result, some applications supporting CSV files have text import wizards that allow users to preview the first few lines of the file and then specify the delimiter character(s), quoting rules, and field trimming.
A citation was then requested for that; I tested a few things with Excel and Numbers, and found that:
- Excel offered no wizard when reading a file with an extension of .csv - it just assumed comma separation and read the file in, putting all the data in the first clumn if the file was semicolon-separated. If the file had an extension of .txt, it provided the wizard.
- Numbers offered no wizard when reading a file with an extension of .csv, but I guess it used some heuristics and correctly imported a comma-separated file and a semicolon-separated file. It appeared to do the same with files with an extension of .txt.
So I juss removed the whole bit about wizards.
There's a page for the general concept of delimiter-separated values, of which comma-separated values is a particular type, so it's not as if this page has to cover delimiters other than commas. Are there instances where a file with delimiter-separated values with a separator other than a comma is called a "CSV" file? Guy Harris (talk) 05:52, 25 May 2025 (UTC)