The most popular format for representing structured data is called CSV. This format is just a text file with a two-dimensional table in it whereby values in a row are separated with commas, and rows are placed on every new line. It looks like this:
1, 2, 3, 4
5, 6, 7, 8
9, 10, 11, 12
The advantages of this file format are that it has a straightforward structure, there are many software tools that can process it, it is human-readable, and it is supported on a variety of computer platforms. Disadvantages are a lack of support of multidimensional data and data with complex structuring, as well as slow parsing speed in comparison with binary formats.
Another widely used format is JSON. Although the format contains JavaScript in its abbreviation, we can use it with almost all programming languages. This is a file format with name-value pairs...