> What if the character separating fields is not a comma? > Not kidding. We'd ll be better off really, but that ship has sailed. Using CSV for data which is o

> What if the character separating fields is not a comma? > Not kidding. We'd ll be better off really, but that ship has sailed. Using CSV for data which is only ever read by a machine is a dumb decision. Use the RS (record separator) character and many of these ambiguities disappear. Of course, like I said, that ship has sailed. If you want your data to be read nicely by other programs you're probably stuck with CSV, TSV, or something similar.