TSV / PSV / CSV Delimiter Converter

How to Use the Delimiter Converter

1. Paste your data into the input area on the left (or top on mobile).
2. Select the input format — or leave it on "Auto-detect" and the tool will figure it out.
3. Choose the output format — CSV, TSV, PSV, SSV, or a custom character.
4. Configure options — toggle header row, trim whitespace, or always-quote output fields.
5. Review the table preview — verify columns look correct before copying or downloading.
6. Copy or download — use the buttons above the output with the correct file extension.

CSV, TSV, PSV and SSV Explained

Delimited text files are one of the oldest and most universal data interchange formats. Every spreadsheet application, database, and data processing tool can read and write them. The core idea is simple: fields on each row are separated by a delimiter character, and rows are separated by newlines. The four most common delimiter conventions are:

• CSV — Comma-Separated Values: the most common format. Used by Excel, Google Sheets, PostgreSQL COPY, MySQL exports, and countless APIs. RFC 4180 is the informal standard. Fields containing commas are wrapped in double quotes.
• TSV — Tab-Separated Values: uses a tab character (\t) as the delimiter. Preferred when data contains commas — no quoting is required for most text fields. Popular in bioinformatics, MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE, and Unix pipeline tools.
• PSV — Pipe-Separated Values: uses the pipe character (|) as the delimiter. Common in legacy systems, SQL query output formatters (e.g., MySQL CLI display format), and log processing pipelines where commas and tabs may appear in data.
• SSV — Semicolon-Separated Values: uses a semicolon (;). Standard in European locales where Excel uses semicolons as the CSV delimiter because commas are used as decimal separators (1.234,56 vs 1,234.56).

Quoted Fields and Embedded Delimiters

RFC 4180 specifies that a field containing the delimiter, a double-quote, or a newline must be enclosed in double quotes. A double-quote within a quoted field is escaped by doubling it (""). This tool fully implements this quoting behaviour in both parsing and emission. For example, a CSV field containing New York, NY is stored as "New York, NY" in the file. When converting to TSV, the tool unquotes the field (since the output delimiter is tab, not comma) and emits New York, NY without quotes.

Auto-Detection Algorithm

The auto-detect feature analyses the first five rows of your input and counts occurrences of comma, tab, pipe, and semicolon characters outside of quoted strings. The delimiter character that appears most consistently — the same count across all sampled rows — is selected. If the data is ambiguous (for example, a single row), the tool defaults to comma. You can always override auto-detection using the input format selector.

When to Use Each Format

• Use CSV when sending data to Excel, Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet — it is the universal spreadsheet import format
• Use TSV when your data contains commas and you want to avoid quoting complexity — TSV is simpler to parse in scripts
• Use PSV when working with legacy database exports or log files from tools that output pipe-delimited records
• Use SSV when your audience uses European locale settings — Excel on those systems opens .csv files using semicolons
• Use a custom delimiter when you are designing a proprietary data format or working with a system that uses an uncommon separator

Related Tools

After converting your delimited file, you might want to convert it to JSON for use in a web application — use our CSV to JSON Converter. If you need to inspect or transform JSON data, the JSON Formatter is the best starting point. For YAML-based workflows such as GitHub Actions or Kubernetes, the JSON to YAML Converter completes the pipeline.