The encoding, line endings, and the used separators are random. Encoding/decoding behavior may be locale-dependent. E.g. if you use Excel with a de-DE locale to create a CSV file, Excel with a en-US locale won't open it. The former uses ';' as separators and the latter expects ','.
Since the format is so (seemingly) simple, there are millions of ad hoc implementations out there. Naturally, most of them are horribly broken.
Fun fact: ASCII actually reserved control characters for this stuff. 1F is the "unit separator" and 1E is the "record separator". There is even a "group separator" (1D) and a "file separator" (1C).
The encoding, line endings, and the used separators are random. Encoding/decoding behavior may be locale-dependent. E.g. if you use Excel with a de-DE locale to create a CSV file, Excel with a en-US locale won't open it. The former uses ';' as separators and the latter expects ','.
Since the format is so (seemingly) simple, there are millions of ad hoc implementations out there. Naturally, most of them are horribly broken.
Fun fact: ASCII actually reserved control characters for this stuff. 1F is the "unit separator" and 1E is the "record separator". There is even a "group separator" (1D) and a "file separator" (1C).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#ASCII_control_code_chart