Tab-separated values (TSV) is a simple, text-based file format for storing tabular data.

TSV is a simple file format that is widely supported, so it is often used in data exchange to move tabular data between different computer programs that support the format.

For example, a TSV file might be used to transfer information from a database to a spreadsheet.

The head of the Iris flower data set can be stored as a TSV using the following plain text (note that the HTML rendering may convert tabs to spaces): The TSV plain text above corresponds to the following tabular data: The IANA media type standard for TSV achieves simplicity by simply disallowing tabs within fields.

[4] Since the values in the TSV format cannot contain literal tabs or newline characters, a convention is necessary for lossless conversion of text values with these characters.