PrintA common text-based data interchange format is the comma-separated value (CSV) file. This is often used when transferring spreadsheets or other tabular data. Each line in the file represents a row of the dataset, and the columns in the data are separated by commas. The file often begins with a header line containing all the field names.
Spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel can understand the CSV structure and display all the values in a row-column grid. A CSV file may look a little messier when you open it in a text editor, but it can be helpful to always continue thinking of it as a grid structure. If you had a Python list of rows and a Python list of column values for each row, you could use looping logic to pull out any value you needed. This is exactly what the Python csv module gives you. It's easiest to learn about the csv module by looking at a real example.
Lesson content developed by Jim Detwiler, Jan Wallgrun and James O’Brien