TSV is a relatively simple format and is widely supported for data exchange by software that generally deals with tabular data. For example, a TSV file might be used to transfer information from a database to a spreadsheet.
Example
The following are records of the Iris flower data set in TSV format. Since a tab is not a printable character (is invisible), an arrow (→) is used for demonstration here to denote a tab character.
The following is the same data rendered as a table.
Sepal length
Sepal width
Petal length
Petal width
Species
5.1
3.5
1.4
0.2
I. setosa
4.9
3.0
1.4
0.2
I. setosa
4.7
3.2
1.3
0.2
I. setosa
4.6
3.1
1.5
0.2
I. setosa
5.0
3.6
1.4
0.2
I. setosa
If a text editor that supports Dynamic tab stops (aka. "elastic tabstops") is used to view the contents of a TSV file, the layout will look like the table rendering just without cell borders and header row formatting (though the latter can be achieved using Unicode characters).
Delimiter collision
As a form of delimiter collision, if a field (record value) contained a tab character, the data format would become meaningless since tabs were no longer only used between fields. To prevent this situation, the IANAmedia type standard for TSV simply disallows a tab within a field. Similarly, a value cannot contain a line terminator.[4] To represent a value with an embedded tab or line terminator character, a commonly-used mechanism is to replace the character with the corresponding escape sequence as shown in the following table.[5][6]
Another commonly-used convention, borrowed from CSV (RFC4180), is to enclose a value that contains a tab or line terminator character in quotes.[7][8]
Line terminator
As for any text file, the character(s) used for line terminator varies. On a Microsoft-based system, normally it's a carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) sequence. On a Unix-based system, it's just LF. The de-facto specification[9] uses the term "EOL" which is an ambiguous term like line terminator and newline. Software often is designed to either handle the line terminator for the platform on which it runs or to handle either terminator.
References
↑U of Edin. Research Data Support Team. "Choose the best file formats". University of Edinburgh. § Formats we recommend. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
Welinder, Morten (19 December 2012). "§14.2.3 — Text File Formats". The Gnumeric Manual (v1.12ed.). Archived from the original on 30 November 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2023.
