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Real world example of this that we just experienced: I work with a provider who offers CSV exports as the only way to access data. Recently, we found they were

Real world example of this that we just experienced: I work with a provider who offers CSV exports as the only way to access data. Recently, we found they were including unsanitized user input directly in fields. They weren't even quoting these fields. The platform "notified their quality assurance team ASAP" (like every other issue, we never heard back), but we had a deadline. This, of course, was a mess, but being able to quickly open the file and fix quotes was all it took. I shudder at the thought of trying to salvage a corrupted binary with zero help from the holder of the data.

Too 3y ago
This sounds like a problem that wouldn’t have existed in the first place if following a binary protocol with a standard format and using a proper serialization library. The issue comes from CSV files looking easy to generate by hand, when it in fact is not.
- rossdavidh 3y ago
  ...but if it was a binary protocol that did have a problem, of any sort whatsoever, and you couldn't get the provider to address is (in time), then you're hosed if it's not human readable.
- ultrarunner 3y ago
  This is a decent point, but practically the platform uses some library in their ancient ASP application. The issue is that these types of things can't be fixed because the original author is gone and the tech debt has become unmanageable. This is not the only issue we've had, unfortunately. Debugging this same issue in a binary format is far and away not going to happen in this scenario.