Editing Delimiter-separated values (section)

== Delimited formats ==

Any character may be used to separate the values, but the most common delimiters are the [[comma (punctuation)|comma]], [[Tab stop|tab]], and [[Colon (punctuation)|colon]].<ref name="artofunix" />{{rp|113}}<ref>Under UNIX, the colon is the most common DSV delimiter for values that may contain whitespace. ''Ibid''.</ref> The [[vertical bar]] (also referred to as ''pipe'') and [[space (punctuation)|space]] are also sometimes used.<ref name="artofunix" />{{rp|113}} Column headers are sometimes included as the first line, and each subsequent line is a row of data. The lines are separated by [[newline]]s.

For example, the following fields in each record are delimited by commas, and each record by newlines:
 "Date","Pupil","Grade"
 "25 May","Bloggs, Fred","C"
 "25 May","Doe, Jane","B"
 "15 July","Bloggs, Fred","A"
 "15 April","Muniz, Alvin ""Hank""","A"

Note the use of the [[double quote]] to enclose each field.  This prevents the comma in the actual field value (Bloggs, Fred; Doe, Jane; etc.) from being interpreted as a field separator.  This necessitates a way to "[[escape character|escape]]" the field wrapper itself, in this case the double quote; it is customary to double the double quotes actually contained in a field as with those surrounding "Hank".  In this way, any [[ASCII]] text including newlines can be contained in a field.

[[ASCII]] and [[Unicode]] include several [[control character]]s that are intended to be used as delimiters. They are: [[File separator|28 for File Separator]], [[Group separator|29 for Group Separator]], [[Record separator|30 for Record Separator]], and [[Unit separator|31 for Unit Separator]]. Example of such use is [[MARC standards#MARC 21|MARC 21]] bibliographic data format.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2007 |title=Character Sets: General Character Set Issues: MARC 21 Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media |url=https://www.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specchargeneral.html |access-date=2024-08-02 |website=[[Library of Congress]]}}</ref> Use of these characters has not achieved widespread adoption; some systems have replaced their control properties with more accepted controls such as [[Newline|CR/LF]] and TAB.{{citation needed|date=February 2019}}