[teddyh]

CSV isn’t so much “simple” as “underspecified”. Sure, Comma separated values, but what happens when a value contains a comma? It emerges that people normally use quoted strings ‘"a,b"’ for that, but then what do you do when you need to include quote characters in your values? Etc. etc.

The basic rule for CSV is: Don’t. Or at least use a library which emits RFC 4180-compatible results. If you need to parse some co-called “CSV” non-RFC-compatible monstrosity, do whatever you need to parse it, but don’t have any illusions of it being in any way “standard”.

[wizzwizz4]

This is the problem with “artificial simplicity” – people make systems too simple, so the abstractions leak heavily, and by the time you want to get anything done you have a massive pile of leaked complexity to wade through.