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Asked: 2026-05-30T16:42:18+00:00

I am parsing a file of data whose fields are separated by pipes. The

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I am parsing a file of data whose fields are separated by pipes. The records are separated by newlines. This is similar to a CSV file or even a TSV file (http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/TSV.html), but I wonder what the accepted file extension for pipe delimited data is?

I do not see one specifically mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delimiter-separated_values and I have not found mention of one in the 5 or so StackOverflow questions I referenced.

The WP article suggests to me that, by way of “extension” from comma to CSV and tab to TSV, the extension should be PSV. Not everyone calls a pipe a pipe though.

Maybe there is a popular software package that uses pipe delimited data and has an extension for it, thereby setting the de facto standard?

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  1. Editorial Team

    I had this same question because I wanted to follow the standard if there was any. The obvious choice here is .psv considering the naming system of .csv and .tsv – however, I couldn’t find this in use anywhere.

    The most common extension that I could find associated with a pipe-delimited file is simply .txt. Exports from census.gov and most other government entities use .txt for pipe-delimited files.

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