Logging to CSV files

One of the most widely used formats for logging tabular structured information to files is comma-separated values (CSV). Because a CSV file is still a flat text file, CSV is the most popular format for exchanging information between heterogeneous applications.A CSV file is a representation of a rectangular dataset (matrix) containing numeric or string columns. Each row of the matrix is represented by a list of values (one for each column), separated by commas, and should have the same number of values. Sometimes, other value delimiters may be used, such as tab (\t), colon (:), and semicolon (;) characters. The first row might contain the column heads. Usually, a line break, is used as a row delimiter, which is a CRLF (Carriage Return Line Feed) character (usually entered as \r\n), or simply by LF (\n) on Unix systems. Thus, an example of the contents of a CSV file might be as follows:

Figure 8.1 – Example of CSV file content

Note that spaces become part of...