# Side Thoughts: Promoting pipe tables as a potential alternative to .CSV format (e.g. .PSV ?) **URL:** \ **Category:** Application\ **Created:** [September 11, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/side-thoughts-promoting-pipe-tables-as-a-potential-alternative-to-csv-format-e-g-psv/1862 "2015-09-11T15:24:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 12
**Author:** ![mofosyne](https://talk.commonmark.org/user_avatar/talk.commonmark.org/mofosyne/32/1438_2.png) [@mofosyne](https://talk.commonmark.org/u/mofosyne)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/side-thoughts-promoting-pipe-tables-as-a-potential-alternative-to-csv-format-e-g-psv/1862/12 "2015-11-09T04:38:25Z")
Just some extra thoughts: - Would it be safe to use this for `.psv` or should it adopt a separate extension, since it is is a more strictly defined standard? - It seems thought I would just hijack the `.psv` extension anyway. Since that’s what it seems commonmark is doing anyhow with `.md` - Strict mode (markdown tables with header auto detect) vs Compatibility mode (Cannot assume header, only one sheet, no starting `|` character for each line ) . This can perhaps be distinguished via the presence of a `#` in the first few lines, without encountering any `|`. - Thought it would be nice to eventually stick to strict mode. (Or maybe we make compatibility mode, an optional thing?) - `:` Can be safely used as a deliminator for subsequent multiline cells, as long as the last line used `|` - Since this is aimed at being simple parser competitor to CSV. It should probably ignore all styling `:`. - Perhaps could have multiline headers cells, by having a starting divider and detecting an ending divider. - How could we have non data fields like `TOTAL?` --- _[View the full topic](https://talk.commonmark.org/t/side-thoughts-promoting-pipe-tables-as-a-potential-alternative-to-csv-format-e-g-psv/1862)._