A love letter to the CSV format

Not sure where this link belongs, but figured because Notenik accommodates formats like CSV well that this would be an alright spot.

The specification of CSV holds in its title: “comma separated values”. Okay, it’s a lie, but still, the specification holds in a tweet and can be explained to anybody in seconds: commas separate values, new lines separate rows. Now quote values containing commas and line breaks, double your quotes, and that’s it.


If I recall, the last time the CSV format came in handy for me was when I wanted to convert my LibraryThing catalog into a Notenik collection. I exported it to CSV, adjusted some fields using awk and imported it into Notenik. A fine experience.

Thanks for sharing! A lot of my early apps used CSV (or tab-delimited text) for their file storage, and it’s definitely one inspiration for Notenik!