Comma-separated values facts for kids

Have you ever used a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets? A CSV file, which stands for comma-separated values, is a simple way to store information that looks like a spreadsheet table. It's a plain text file, meaning it's just text characters, without any special formatting like bold letters or colors. Think of it as a basic list of facts, numbers, or dates, all neatly organized.

How CSV Files Work

A CSV file has a very simple structure. The first line usually contains the headers. These are like the titles for each column in your table. They tell you what kind of information is below them.

Starting from the second line, each line in the file represents a row of data. Each piece of information in that row is called a cell. What makes it a "comma-separated" file is that a comma (,) separates each cell in a row. This is how the computer knows where one piece of data ends and the next one begins.

For example, imagine you have a list of your friends, their ages, and their favorite colors. Here's how that might look in a CSV file:

name,age,favorite color
Alice,12,green
Bob,23,purple
Jane,34,blue

In this example:

• The first line (`name,age,favorite color`) lists the headers.
• The second line (`Alice,12,green`) is the first row of data. "Alice" is in the 'name' column, "12" is in the 'age' column, and "green" is in the 'favorite color' column.

Special Characters in Cells

Sometimes, the information in a cell might contain a comma itself. For example, if a person's name is "Smith, Joe". If you just wrote `Smith, Joe,45`, the computer might get confused. It wouldn't know if the comma after "Smith" is part of the name or if it's supposed to separate "Smith" from "Joe".

To avoid this confusion, you can put quotation marks (") around the entire cell's data. This tells the computer that everything inside the quotes belongs to that single cell, even if there are commas inside.

Look at these examples:

name,age
Smith, Joe,45
Choi, Ceri,56
Plummer, Olive,23

In the example above, the computer might think "Smith" is one cell and " Joe" is another.

But if you use quotation marks, it becomes clear:

"name","age"
"Smith, Joe","45"
"Choi, Ceri","56"
"Plummer, Olive","23"

Now, the computer knows that "Smith, Joe" is one full name in a single cell. If a cell itself needs to have a quotation mark, you can show it by using two quotation marks (`""`).

Using CSV Files

CSV is a very common way to share table data between different computer programs. However, not all programs read CSV files in exactly the same way.

Even though it's a simple text file, sometimes a program might have trouble reading a CSV file. This can happen because of how the text characters are encoded (like different languages using different character sets) or how line breaks are formatted (how a new line is started). But generally, CSV files are very useful for moving data around!

See also

In Spanish: Valores separados por comas para niños