> why didn't we use one of the dedicated Data Structure separator control codes (e.g. File/Group/Record/Unit separator) that were part of the ASCII standard? B

> why didn't we use one of the dedicated Data Structure separator control codes (e.g. File/Group/Record/Unit separator) that were part of the ASCII standard? Because you can't see them. CSV is, at its core, a text format. Using FS/GS/RS/US would effectively make it a binary format. Also, what happens if one of those bytes appears in data? The simple fact is you will never be able to come up with a text-based format that can handle all possible values without escape sequences, quoting, or length-encoding. And really, that's not that big a deal. It just means you have to write a simple state machine instead of using regex or your language's equivalent of split().