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The one flaw I do see with them is blank cells If you go with the CSV convention of two adjacent tabs => blank cell in the middle, then rows of different lengt
by didntcheck 2y ago
The one flaw I do see with them is blank cells
If you go with the CSV convention of two adjacent tabs => blank cell in the middle, then rows of different length will not line up properly in most text editors. And "different length" depends on the client's tab width too
If you allow any amount of tabs between columns, then you need a special way to signify an actually-blank column. And escaping for when you want to quote that
If you say "use tabs for columns and spaces for alignment", then you've got to trim all values, which may not be desirable
- orev 2y agoYou’re talking about issues with alignment when data is displayed on a terminal or text editor, which is not at all related to data exchange. In data exchange nobody ever allows multiple tabs between columns. If there are multiple tabs with nothing in between it means the column is empty for that row. Just like with CSV, TSV, is always a pain to edit manually so the issues there are the same. Using tabs does have a lower likelihood of conflicting with the actual data.
- didntcheck 2y agoThis is true, but I'd assumed that one of the major reasons to use TSV is for human readability. If not, then I'd personally choose an even rarer character as my delimiter