Editing Comma-separated values (section)

==Specification==
{{IETF RFC|4180}} proposes a [[Specification (technical standard)|specification]] for the CSV format; however, actual practice often does not follow the RFC and the term "CSV" might refer to any file that:<ref name="rfc4180"/><ref>{{cite web | url=http://edoceo.com/utilitas/csv-file-format | title=Comma Separated Values (CSV) Standard File Format | publisher=Edoceo, Inc | access-date=June 4, 2014 | archive-date=July 14, 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200714050729/http://edoceo.com/utilitas/csv-file-format | url-status=live }}</ref>

# is [[plain text]] using a character encoding such as [[ASCII]], various [[Unicode]] character encodings (e.g. [[UTF-8]]), [[EBCDIC]], or [[Shift JIS]],
# consists of records (typically one record per line),
# with the records divided into [[field (computer science)|field]]s separated by a comma,
# where every record has the same sequence of fields.

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.