TSV and CSV explained
TSV is CSV with tab characters as separators. Because tabs almost never appear inside data fields, it sidesteps most of CSV's quoting problems.
CSV is plain text where each line is a row and commas separate the fields. There is no formatting, no formulas, and no second sheet — which is precisely why every system on earth can read it.
- Where TSV files come from
- Bioinformatics, data pipelines and anywhere fields contain commas.
- Where CSV is used
- Database exports, analytics tools and data interchange between systems.