Delimiter-separated values

Delimiter-separated values (DSV) is a way of storing tabular data by separating the fields (values) of each row with a specific character as a delimiter. DSV is often used for data exchange and is commonly supported by database and spreadsheetsoftware.

A delimited text file is a text file that stores data as DSV. Such a file can be classified as a flat-file database if, in fact, the data is database-like – accessing individual rows is meaningful.

A commonly used alternative for text data is fixed-width where each column has the same number of characters – limiting the length of each field value. In contrast, DSV supports field values of any length.