Glossary

Quoted field

A CSV value wrapped in double-quotes so it can safely contain a comma, line break, or quote character without breaking the row structure.

In CSV, any value that contains the delimiter (a comma), a line break, or a double-quote must be enclosed in double-quotes. A literal double-quote inside such a field is escaped by doubling it: the value she said "hi" is written as "she said ""hi""". This quoting is the only thing standing between a comma inside an address and a broken, misaligned row.

Naive parsers that split on commas without honoring quotes are the classic source of CSV corruption: a single quoted field with an internal comma shifts every following column. A correct parser treats quoting as part of the grammar, which is why the same file can look fine in one tool and shredded in another.

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