This, a thousand times. As a fun exercise write a CSV-like spec but using those ASCII chars. table = [row.split(unit_sep) for row in data.split(rec_sep)]

This, a thousand times. As a fun exercise write a CSV-like spec but using those ASCII chars. table = [row.split(unit_sep) for row in data.split(rec_sep)] There's your ASCIISV decoder.