| Internet-Draft | CCSV | June 2024 |
| Rankin | Expires 20 December 2024 | [Page] |
This document documents the format used for Control-Character-Separated Values (CCSV) files and registers the associated MIME type "text/ccsv".¶
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶
The latest revision of this draft can be found at https://oldgrognard.github.io/ccsv-id/draft-rankin-ccsv.html. Status information for this document may be found at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rankin-ccsv/.¶
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at https://github.com/oldgrognard/ccsv-id.¶
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A CCSV (Control-Character-Separated Values file) is a file format that enables moving data between spreadsheets, statistical analysis programs, databases, and any other program that works with rectangular data. It is very similar to (CSV) Comma-Separated Values files [RFC4180], (TSV) Tab-Separated Values files, and their derivatives. Unlike those file types, the CCSV minimizes usage ambiguity by having non-printable characters as delimiters. The two delimiter characters may not appear in the document's text, making the practice of escaping certain characters or adding additional delimiters for certain strings unnecessary. This document seeks to define the format of Control Character Separated Values (CCSV) files and formally register the "text/ccsv" Media Type for CCSV in accordance with [RFC6838].¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
In order for a file to be a CCSV, it MUST adhere to the following formatting rules:¶
A Record Separator RS (U+001E) is used between each record in the file including the header.¶
A Unit Separator US (U+001F) is used between each field in a record.¶
A CCSV MUST begin with a header. The header consists of the names of the columns separated with US (U+001F) entities.¶
The header is terminated with the RS (U+001E) entity if the document contains any records.¶
The header and each record MUST contain the same number of US (U+001F) entities i.e., the header and each record MUST have the same number of fields.¶
Each record in the body is delimited with a RS (U+001E) entity. Note that carriage returns and line feeds are not part of the delimiter and are valid characters in the body of a field.¶
Each field within a record is delimited with the US (U+001F) entity.¶
The US (U+001F) entity and the RS (U+001E) separator MUST NOT appear in the body of a field.¶
The ABNF grammar [STD68] appears as follows:¶
file = header RS *(record RS) [record] header = name *( US name ) record = field *( US field ) name = field field = *VCHAR VCHAR = %x21-7E ; visible characters RS = %x1E ; record separator US = %x1F ; unit separator¶
TODO Security¶
This section provides the media-type registration application (as per [RFC6838]).¶
Type name: text¶
Subtype name: ccsv¶
Required parameters: N/A¶
Optional parameters: N/A¶
Encoding considerations: utf-8¶
Security considerations:¶
Interoperability considerations:¶
Published specification: TBD¶
Applications that use this media type:¶
Fragment identifier considerations: N/A¶
Additional information:¶
Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A
Magic number(s): N/A
File extension(s): CCSV
Macintosh file type code(s): TEXT
¶
Person & email address to contact for further information:¶
Intended usage: COMMON¶
Restrictions on usage: N/A¶
Author: Mike Rankin¶
Change controller:¶
Provisional registration?¶
TODO acknowledge.¶