Data Files

Data can be saved in a lot of file formats. If there is no reason to do otherwise, we prefer delimited files with the options shown in bold. Alternative options are also shown.

file extension	tsv	csv	dat
file extension	ascii	UTF-8	UTF-16BE	UTF-16LE	UCS-4/UTF-32
magic number	None	<BOM>
line delimiter	\n	\r	\r\n
line delimiter after last line	no	yes
field delimiter	<tab>	,	;
field delimiter after last field	no	yes
Quoting character	None	"	'
Escape character	None	\
First line	Contains header	Contains data
Last field in line	Must not be empty	May be empty
Whitespace following delimiter	Part of field	Not part of field