- fields/columns delimited by the comma
- records/rows terminated by newlines
- commas,double-quotes,line-terminators embedded as data should be enclosed within “”
- all records should have the same sequence of fields
- data in fields are plain texts
- any field may be quoted, some must be
- an embedded double-quote character must be represented by a pair of double-quote characters
- RFC 4180 states "Spaces are considered part of a field and should not be ignored
- according to RFC 4180, spaces outside quotes in a field are not allowed
- double quotes are not allowed in unquoted fields according to RFC 4180
- The first record may be a “header”
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others