Alternatives to CSV file types

Question

I'm building an application that requires an information storage file format like '.CSV', but the values to be stored make abundant use of commas. For the sake of readability of the files in text editors, I'd prefer to not surround each value with double-quotes as is the standard for values containing commas. Is there any alternative you'd recommend, such as maybe a previously established file extension format that uses some character other than commas to separate values?

Answer 1

Excel, at least, allows you to specify any character as a separator in a CSV file by putting a command like:

sep=;

in the first row. Semicolons are a common choice.

Answer 2

Tab separated values (TSV) is probably the next thing I'd look at. Depending on what language you're using, a good CSV library should allow you to specify a separator, so you could potentially make it anything you want.