online CSV Editor is a powerful CSV file editor. It can open any format of separated text, including the standard comma and tab separated files (CSV and TSV), and allows total control over their content. With a clean and neat interface the online CSV Editor is also ideal to simply view and read CSV, or any text delimited, files. In PHP, it has more than one native function to read CSV data. fgetcsv () – It reads the CSV file pointer and reads the line in particular to the file handle. str_getcsv () -It reads the input CSV string into an array. This article provides alternate ways of reading a CSV file to a PHP array.CSV is a common data exchange format that stores tabular data in a plain text file. A CSV file stores the data in a delimited text file that uses commas to separate the values. Here are 8,749 public repositories matching this topic... As of PHP 5.6 the file(), file_get_contents(), and fopen() functions will return false if you are referencing a source URL that doesn't have a valid SSL certificate. Presumably, you will run into this a lot in your development environments this will drive you crazy.How can I output a UTF-8 CSV in PHP that Excel will read properly? 43. Convert array into csv. 0. How to export a csv file containing data in codeigniter? 0.Jun 5, 2019 · 6 Answers. Its blank because you are writing to file. you should write to output using php://output instead and also send header information to indicate that it's csv. header ('Content-Type: text/csv'); header ('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="sample.csv"'); $data = array ( 'aaa,bbb,ccc,dddd', '123,456,789', '"aaa","bbb"' ); $fp ... Apr 8, 2011 · I want to upload a csv file with php. After the file is uploaded, I want to display the data of the CSV file. I would like an example how to accomplish this task. csv_1000.csv, csv_1030.csv, csv_1100.csv etc. Then at a predefined time, possibly using a cron job, you could load the data, file by file and once loaded, either delete them or empty them. The way I see it: 1. get feed line - check timestamp. 2. if timestamp between certain times, append to particular file. 3. As the original asker wanted to "write to the browser on the fly", maybe is worth noting (as was my case and noone mentioned it) that if you want to force a file name and a dialog asking to download a file in the browser, you must set the proper headers before outputting anything with fputcsv:connection.php: This file is used to connect MySQL with PHP; generate_excel.php: This is the main PHP file that’ll have an export method to export data into the excel. Create MySQL Database Table. Let’s create a tasks table that ll all tasks records which will export later on in excel format.last modified January 10, 2023 PHP CSV tutorial shows how to work with CSV data in PHP. $ php -v php -v PHP 8.1.2 (cli) (built: Aug 8 2022 07:28:23) (NTS) ... We use PHP version 8.1.2. CSV CSV (Comma Separated Values) is a very popular import and export data format used in spreadsheets and databases. Each line in a CSV file is a data record.PHP readfile () Function. The readfile () function reads a file and writes it to the output buffer. Assume we have a text file called "webdictionary.txt", stored on the server, that looks like this: The PHP code to read the file and write it to the output buffer is as follows (the readfile () function returns the number of bytes read on success): Specifies the open file to return and parse a line from. Optional. Specifies the maximum length of a line. Must be greater than the longest line (in characters) in the CSV file. Omitting this parameter (or setting it to 0) the line length is not limited, which is slightly slower.Add a second column in existing CSV using PHP. 4. Add 2 new column header and contents in csv file using php. 1. PHP csv report add Column names. Hot Network QuestionsAdd a second column in existing CSV using PHP. 4. Add 2 new column header and contents in csv file using php. 1. PHP csv report add Column names. Hot Network QuestionsParseCsv: A lightweight PHP library dedicated to handling CSV data. Are there any limitations or considerations when importing or exporting large CSV files with PHP and MySQL? When importing or exporting large CSV files with PHP and MySQL, keep these considerations in mind: Memory usage: Allocate sufficient memory.Oct 29, 2022 · Character Separated Values (CSV) or Comma Separated Values is a file type containing plain text content with a comma or a character as separators. It is a convenient form to store simple data. PHP has two inbuilt functions to read CSV file. fgetcsv () – Reads CSV using the reference of the file resource. str_getcsv () – Reads CSV data ... Jan 14, 2011 · As the original asker wanted to "write to the browser on the fly", maybe is worth noting (as was my case and noone mentioned it) that if you want to force a file name and a dialog asking to download a file in the browser, you must set the proper headers before outputting anything with fputcsv: Use the opendir () function to open a directory and get the directory handle and the closedir () function once you are done with the directory. Use the readdir () function to read the entries in a directory specified by a directory handle. Use the mkdir () function to create a new directory. Use the rmdir () function to remove a directory. Aug 12, 2015 · How to validate an uploaded csv/text file with php. Related. 39. php fgetcsv returning all lines. 2. fgetcsv - Perform function on first column value? 1. Aug 1, 2023 · A simple function to return 2 Dimensional array by parsing a CSV file. <?php function get2DArrayFromCsv ($file, $delimiter) { if (($handle = fopen ($file, "r")) !== FALSE) { $i = 0; while (($lineArray = fgetcsv ($handle, 4000, $delimiter)) !== FALSE) { for ($j = 0; $j < count ($lineArray); $j ++) { $data2DArray [$i][$j] = $lineArray [$j]; } $i CSV is a “comma separated values” ASCII text file. See the wikipedia for more information on this format. This feed adheres to the USGS Earthquakes Feed Lifecycle Policy. Usage. A simple text format suitable for loading data into spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel™. For instance, try exporting as .csv a Google Docs spreadsheet (File > Download as > .csv) which has new lines and commas as part of the field values and see how the .csv content looks, then try to parse it using str_getcsv() ... it will spectacularly regardless of the arguments you pass to it.Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas should be enclosed in double-quotes. For example: "aaa","b CRLF bb","ccc" CRLF zzz,yyy,xxx 7. If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with another double quote.PHP fputcsv () In this example, the fputcsv () function accepts an array of database results and a file resource pointer. This array of results is converted into the CSV format and written to the target .csv file with the reference of the given file pointer. In this code, we are creating the file pointer by opening PHP output stream.Now in the bottom status bar change the file format from "Unicode (UTF-8)" to "Western (ISO Latin 1)" and save the file. Now go to your Mac Excel 2008 and select File > Import > Select csv > Find your file > in File origin select "Windows (ANSI)" and voila the UTF-8 chars are showing correctly. PHP Code to Read a CSV File With Headers into an Associative Array. Open the csv file and get the contents with the array_map function. Use the array_shift method to get your header row. Create a PHP array to store your CSV body content. Loop through the remaining rows with a foreach loop.Dec 9, 2021 · ParseCsv: A lightweight PHP library dedicated to handling CSV data. Are there any limitations or considerations when importing or exporting large CSV files with PHP and MySQL? When importing or exporting large CSV files with PHP and MySQL, keep these considerations in mind: Memory usage: Allocate sufficient memory. Web Development PHP Language Fundamentals CSV. In this post, I'll show you how to use PHP's built-in functions to read and print the contents of a CSV file and convert it into an array. We'll use fopen () and fgetcsv () to read the contents of a CSV file, and then we'll convert it into an array using the array_map () and str_getcsv () functions.Overview. League\Csv is a simple library to ease CSV document loading as well as writing, selecting and converting CSV records.. Usage Parsing a CSV document. Access and filter records from a CSV document saved on the local filesystem.Removing first line of CSV in PHP? 0. Delete lines from CSV file using html web page. Related. 1. How to skip specific line from csv file using fgetcsv function. 0.PHP fputcsv () In this example, the fputcsv () function accepts an array of database results and a file resource pointer. This array of results is converted into the CSV format and written to the target .csv file with the reference of the given file pointer. In this code, we are creating the file pointer by opening PHP output stream.Definition and Usage The fgetcsv () function parses a line from an open file, checking for CSV fields. Tip: Also see the fputcsv () function. Syntax fgetcsv ( file, length, separator, enclosure ) Parameter Values Technical Details More Examples Example Read and output the entire contents of a CSV file: <?php $file = fopen ("contacts.csv","r");Since there is a misunderstanding about ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252 & ANSI in your question an important thing to note here is that: The so-called Windows character set (WinLatin1, or Windows code page 1252, to be exact) uses some of those positions for printable characters.Steps for Parsing CSV file using PHP: Step 1. Create a folder and add that CSV file and create a new PHP file in it. Step 2. Open the PHP file and write the following code in it which is explained in the following steps. Open dataset of CSV using fopen function. Read a line using fgetcsv () function.I have a csv file with 3 columns: email address, first name and last name. I have got the stage where I can print out the array using the following code: I have got the stage where I can print out the array using the following code:The fputcsv () function formats a line as CSV and writes it to an open file. Tip: Also see the fgetcsv () function.Leitura e manipulação de CSV com. Para efetuar a leitura de um arquivo com extensão “.CSV” e manipula-lo através do PHP é muito fácil. Vamos supor que possuímos uma pasta em nosso ...I'm trying to parse a CSV string to an array in PHP. The CSV string has the following attributes: Delimiter: , Enclosure: " New line: \r Example content:Apr 9, 2020 · The file will display the contents of the csv file are displayed on the screen. In the above code, beginning from row 1 (since row 0 would usually contain headers/column names), the csv file is opened in read mode and the fgetcsv function is called to read in 1000 rows of data present in the csv file. Step 1: Create sample MySQL data in key-value pair. Step 2: PHP code to get options type and force to browser download file instead of display. Here we are setting header information to tell the browser that we are producing a CSV file and that the file should be offered for download. Step 3: Define HTML layout for displaying data in table and ...Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas should be enclosed in double-quotes. For example: "aaa","b CRLF bb","ccc" CRLF zzz,yyy,xxx 7. If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with another double quote. Jun 3, 2021 · Kode PHP berikut menunjukkan cara mengekspor catatan MySQL ke file CSV menggunakan fputcsv (). Dalam kode ini, nama dan nilai kolom database diekstraksi baris demi baris dan dimasukkan ke dalam CSV target. Pegangan CSV target dibuat sebelum menjalankan fungsi fputcsv (). Can anyone post an example/link on how to deal with search box query alongside csv/xls export? I would like to use search box as query and $_GET["search"] variable, then retrieve data from mysql, display in the table and then export to xls/csv. Jul 3, 2013 · He meant double quotes around the whole string, instead of simple quotes. in case anyone looking for getting newline using implode with array of string. use implode (PHP_EOL) will do the trick. Use " " inside the cell value (wrapped in ") and "\r " for your end-of-record marker. If your cell entry include multiple lines, then you must enclose ... Feb 17, 2017 · If you seriously want to write a script to read Excel files all by yourself, then good luck to you... it's a lot of hard work (PHPExcel has been 3 1/2+ years in development, and is still ongoing) especially if you're starting with a CSV reader that simply requires PHP's built-in functions. I want to upload a csv file with php. After the file is uploaded, I want to display the data of the CSV file. I would like an example how to accomplish this task.Jun 13, 2015 · Using text/csv is the most appropriate type. You should also consider adding a Content-Disposition header to the response. Often a text/csv will be loaded by a Internet Explorer directly into a hosted instance of Excel. This may or may not be a desirable result. Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=myfilename.csv"); Jan 14, 2011 · As the original asker wanted to "write to the browser on the fly", maybe is worth noting (as was my case and noone mentioned it) that if you want to force a file name and a dialog asking to download a file in the browser, you must set the proper headers before outputting anything with fputcsv: Feb 17, 2017 · If you seriously want to write a script to read Excel files all by yourself, then good luck to you... it's a lot of hard work (PHPExcel has been 3 1/2+ years in development, and is still ongoing) especially if you're starting with a CSV reader that simply requires PHP's built-in functions. Aug 3, 2021 · @shaedrich thanks for your response, i edited my question with my function csv_content_parser(), i´m using this function to get all line from my csv. How i sayed before, i don´t know if it´s the better solution but with this i´m getting my headers and all content. Aug 14, 2023 · Export Data from Database to Excel in PHP: The following code export data from the database and save it as an Excel file (.xlsx) using PHP and MySQL. Include the PHP XLSX generator library file. Define column headings in an array and store them in the export data array. Fetch records from the database and store them in the export data array. csv_1000.csv, csv_1030.csv, csv_1100.csv etc. Then at a predefined time, possibly using a cron job, you could load the data, file by file and once loaded, either delete them or empty them. The way I see it: 1. get feed line - check timestamp. 2. if timestamp between certain times, append to particular file. 3. Here's a little function to convert a multi-line CSV string to an array: <?php function csv_to_array ($csv, $delimiter = ',', $enclosure = '"', $escape = '\\', $terminator = " ") { $r = array(); $rows = explode ($terminator, trim ($csv)); $names = array_shift ($rows); $names = str_getcsv ($names, $delimiter, $enclosure, $escape); $nc = count ...CSV is a common data exchange format that stores tabular data in a plain text file. A CSV file stores the data in a delimited text file that uses commas to separate the values. Here are 8,749 public repositories matching this topic...Array ( [0] => John [1] => Doe [2] => New York [3] => USA ) Array ( [0] => Jane [1] => Doe [2] => Seattle [3] => USA ) Array ( [0] => Ola [1] => Nordmann [2] => Oslo ...Jan 28, 2014 · Adding the headers when creating a csv file PhP, SQL. 1. Add heading on csv using fputcsv php. 0. How do I add a header line to my csv file created with fputcsv? But if all you want to do is write a csv file; then you're far better using PHP's built-in fputcsv() function than a library designed to manipulate genuine spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, formatting, formulae, and working with multiple different file formats, etc.Simple API. Read and Write to CSV documents in a memory efficient and scalable way. Support PHP Stream filtering capabilities. Transform CSV documents into popular formats (JSON, XML or HTML) Web Development PHP Language Fundamentals CSV. In this post, I'll show you how to use PHP's built-in functions to read and print the contents of a CSV file and convert it into an array. We'll use fopen () and fgetcsv () to read the contents of a CSV file, and then we'll convert it into an array using the array_map () and str_getcsv () functions.The linked article has an example of reading CSV using PHP. Then, it iterates the JSON array and applies PHP fputcsv() to write the CSV row. It reads the array_keys to supply the CSV header. And this will be executed only for the first time. It writes the column names as the first row of the output CSV. json-string-to-csv.phponline CSV Editor is a powerful CSV file editor. It can open any format of separated text, including the standard comma and tab separated files (CSV and TSV), and allows total control over their content. With a clean and neat interface the online CSV Editor is also ideal to simply view and read CSV, or any text delimited, files.Steps for Parsing CSV file using PHP: Step 1. Create a folder and add that CSV file and create a new PHP file in it. Step 2. Open the PHP file and write the following code in it which is explained in the following steps. Open dataset of CSV using fopen function. Read a line using fgetcsv () function.Removing first line of CSV in PHP? 0. Delete lines from CSV file using html web page. Related. 1. How to skip specific line from csv file using fgetcsv function. 0.Aug 1, 2023 · Parses a string input for fields in CSV format and returns an array containing the fields read.. Note: . The locale settings are taken into account by this function. If LC_CTYPE is e.g. en_US.UTF-8, strings in one-byte encodings may be read wrongly by this function. Feb 7, 2019 · But if all you want to do is write a csv file; then you're far better using PHP's built-in fputcsv() function than a library designed to manipulate genuine spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, formatting, formulae, and working with multiple different file formats, etc. Simple API. Read and Write to CSV documents in a memory efficient and scalable way. Support PHP Stream filtering capabilities. Transform CSV documents into popular formats (JSON, XML or HTML)I want to upload a csv file with php. After the file is uploaded, I want to display the data of the CSV file. I would like an example how to accomplish this task.May 27, 2013 · I'm trying to parse a CSV string to an array in PHP. The CSV string has the following attributes: Delimiter: , Enclosure: " New line: \r Example content: Aug 1, 2023 · A simple function to return 2 Dimensional array by parsing a CSV file. <?php function get2DArrayFromCsv ($file, $delimiter) { if (($handle = fopen ($file, "r")) !== FALSE) { $i = 0; while (($lineArray = fgetcsv ($handle, 4000, $delimiter)) !== FALSE) { for ($j = 0; $j < count ($lineArray); $j ++) { $data2DArray [$i][$j] = $lineArray [$j]; } $i PHP Code to Read a CSV File With Headers into an Associative Array. Open the csv file and get the contents with the array_map function. Use the array_shift method to get your header row. Create a PHP array to store your CSV body content. Loop through the remaining rows with a foreach loop. Now in the bottom status bar change the file format from "Unicode (UTF-8)" to "Western (ISO Latin 1)" and save the file. Now go to your Mac Excel 2008 and select File > Import > Select csv > Find your file > in File origin select "Windows (ANSI)" and voila the UTF-8 chars are showing correctly. @pHorseSpec This lines wasn't related to the problem itself so I didn't change it. If you need to convert some JSON to CSV you should decide the structure of your CSV file first of all because JSON and CSV is a different data structures: JSON is a tree and CSV is a table.Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas should be enclosed in double-quotes. For example: "aaa","b CRLF bb","ccc" CRLF zzz,yyy,xxx 7. If double-quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double-quote appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with another double quote.CSV(Comma Separate Values) is a text file that uses comma to separate values. This is used to export data easily and also used to import data from it in an efficient manner. It stores tabular data where each comma separates the column i.e. shows the end of that particular column.Aug 1, 2023 · Parses a string input for fields in CSV format and returns an array containing the fields read.. Note: . The locale settings are taken into account by this function. If LC_CTYPE is e.g. en_US.UTF-8, strings in one-byte encodings may be read wrongly by this function. All these PHP functions are used in the above sections to read CSV file before processing it. The fgetcsv () function is used to read the CSV file data with the reference of the file handle. The str_getcsv () will accept the CSV string instead of the file pointer. Then the CSV string will be parsed to read the data.May 28, 2023 · This tutorial will walk you through how to write and append data to files in PHP. Free example code download included. ... WRITING AN ARRAY TO CSV FILE. 5-write-csv.php csv_1000.csv, csv_1030.csv, csv_1100.csv etc. Then at a predefined time, possibly using a cron job, you could load the data, file by file and once loaded, either delete them or empty them. The way I see it: 1. get feed line - check timestamp. 2. if timestamp between certain times, append to particular file. 3. CSV is a common data exchange format that stores tabular data in a plain text file. A CSV file stores the data in a delimited text file that uses commas to separate the values. Here are 8,749 public repositories matching this topic... Csv is a library to ease parsing, writing and filtering CSV in PHP. The library goal is to be powerful while remaining lightweight, by utilizing PHP native classes whenever possible. Highlights. Easy to use API; Read and Write to CSV documents in a memory efficient and scalable way; Support PHP stream filtering capabilities The linked article has an example of reading CSV using PHP. Then, it iterates the JSON array and applies PHP fputcsv() to write the CSV row. It reads the array_keys to supply the CSV header. And this will be executed only for the first time. It writes the column names as the first row of the output CSV. json-string-to-csv.phpUse the opendir () function to open a directory and get the directory handle and the closedir () function once you are done with the directory. Use the readdir () function to read the entries in a directory specified by a directory handle. Use the mkdir () function to create a new directory. Use the rmdir () function to remove a directory.Can somebody please give a complete but very simple example on how to import CSV file in PHP? I tried the one I got from the internet but I'm very confused because it's complicated for me. I am using the WAMP server with PHP 5.3.5, Apache 2.2.17, and MySQL 5.5.8. Please help. I tried to paste the code but it's messy.The following article presents a simple method for downloading any data from PHP into an Excel spreadsheet - or at least something that looks like one. What we're actually doing here is creating a text (TAB or CSV) file containing the data which can then be opened by Excel or any other spreadsheet.Dec 14, 2020 · To display the data from CSV file to web browser, we will use fgetcsv () function. Comma Separated Value (CSV) is a text file containing data contents. It is a comma-separated value file with .csv extension, which allows data to be saved in a tabular format. fgetcsv () Function: The fgetcsv () function is used to parse a line from an open file ... In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to read a CSV file using PHP. To do this, we will be using PHP’s native fgetcsv function. Take a look at the following CSV file, which I’ve named example.csv. John,Ireland,19 Ted,USA,21 Lisa,UK,23 Michael,USA,20 Louise,Ireland,30. Now, let’s read this CSV file using PHP. //Open the file. Aug 12, 2016 · How can I output a UTF-8 CSV in PHP that Excel will read properly? 43. Convert array into csv. 0. How to export a csv file containing data in codeigniter? 0. PHP Code to Read a CSV File With Headers into an Associative Array. Open the csv file and get the contents with the array_map function. Use the array_shift method to get your header row. Create a PHP array to store your CSV body content. Loop through the remaining rows with a foreach loop.
Jan 28, 2014 · Adding the headers when creating a csv file PhP, SQL. 1. Add heading on csv using fputcsv php. 0. How do I add a header line to my csv file created with fputcsv? . Max weight for 53
last modified January 10, 2023 PHP CSV tutorial shows how to work with CSV data in PHP. $ php -v php -v PHP 8.1.2 (cli) (built: Aug 8 2022 07:28:23) (NTS) ... We use PHP version 8.1.2. CSV CSV (Comma Separated Values) is a very popular import and export data format used in spreadsheets and databases. Each line in a CSV file is a data record.May 27, 2013 · I'm trying to parse a CSV string to an array in PHP. The CSV string has the following attributes: Delimiter: , Enclosure: " New line: \r Example content: In PHP, it has more than one native function to read CSV data. fgetcsv () – It reads the CSV file pointer and reads the line in particular to the file handle. str_getcsv () -It reads the input CSV string into an array. This article provides alternate ways of reading a CSV file to a PHP array.Jun 13, 2015 · Using text/csv is the most appropriate type. You should also consider adding a Content-Disposition header to the response. Often a text/csv will be loaded by a Internet Explorer directly into a hosted instance of Excel. This may or may not be a desirable result. Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=myfilename.csv"); Removing first line of CSV in PHP? 0. Delete lines from CSV file using html web page. Related. 1. How to skip specific line from csv file using fgetcsv function. 0. Jun 1, 2023 · Steps for Parsing CSV file using PHP: Step 1. Create a folder and add that CSV file and create a new PHP file in it. Step 2. Open the PHP file and write the following code in it which is explained in the following steps. Open dataset of CSV using fopen function. Read a line using fgetcsv () function. Jan 28, 2014 · Adding the headers when creating a csv file PhP, SQL. 1. Add heading on csv using fputcsv php. 0. How do I add a header line to my csv file created with fputcsv? Removing first line of CSV in PHP? 0. Delete lines from CSV file using html web page. Related. 1. How to skip specific line from csv file using fgetcsv function. 0.Definition and Usage The fgetcsv () function parses a line from an open file, checking for CSV fields. Tip: Also see the fputcsv () function. Syntax fgetcsv ( file, length, separator, enclosure ) Parameter Values Technical Details More Examples Example Read and output the entire contents of a CSV file: <?php $file = fopen ("contacts.csv","r");Using my example below you can encode UTF8 your CSV file, you will notice a header with “Content-Encoding: UTF-8” and also in the “Content-Type” header you will see an extra parameter “; charset=UTF-8”. You will also notice the weird echo “\xEF\xBB\xBF” – this is the BOM for the UTF-8 encoding, if your not sure what this is ...Now all that's left to do is for that PHP file to read the contents of the CSV file and print them - the filename=example.csv in the header only suggests to the client browser what name to use for the file, it does not actually fetch the data from the file on the server.Create CSV from PHP Array. So as I mentioned, to create csv file from array, we will use fputcsv() php function and write in the file using the PHP file functions.But if all you want to do is write a csv file; then you're far better using PHP's built-in fputcsv() function than a library designed to manipulate genuine spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, formatting, formulae, and working with multiple different file formats, etc.In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to read a CSV file using PHP. To do this, we will be using PHP’s native fgetcsv function. Take a look at the following CSV file, which I’ve named example.csv. John,Ireland,19 Ted,USA,21 Lisa,UK,23 Michael,USA,20 Louise,Ireland,30. Now, let’s read this CSV file using PHP. //Open the file. Here's a little function to convert a multi-line CSV string to an array: <?php function csv_to_array ($csv, $delimiter = ',', $enclosure = '"', $escape = '\\', $terminator = " ") { $r = array(); $rows = explode ($terminator, trim ($csv)); $names = array_shift ($rows); $names = str_getcsv ($names, $delimiter, $enclosure, $escape); $nc = count ...May 22, 2017 · CSV is not a good format to use with MS Excel for precisely this reason; One option is to write a first line in the file telling MS Excel what separator to expect (e.g. sep=;), but this will not work with all versions of MS Excel or with other csv readers .
