Format guide
TSV
Tab-separated values
TSV is CSV's tab-separated cousin: columns delimited by tab characters instead of commas. Preferred when cell values themselves contain commas (so you don't have to quote everything). Excel reads TSV directly without import wizard prompts. Used by Bioinformatics tools (BLAST, BED format), data export from Postgres (`COPY ... FORMAT csv DELIMITER E'\t'`), and many scientific datasets.
How to open a TSV file
Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, and LibreOffice Calc all open TSV directly. Pandas reads with `pd.read_csv(..., sep='\t')`. Less ambiguity than CSV because tabs almost never appear inside data values.
Primary use
Tab-delimited data exchange where comma-quoting is annoying.
Convert other formats to TSV
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