The Enhanced Character Separated Values format was developed within the Astropy project and is described in Astropy APE6 (DOI). It is composed of a YAML header followed by a CSV-like body, and is intended to be a human-readable and maybe even human-writable format with rich metadata. Most of the useful per-column and per-table metadata is preserved when de/serializing to this format. The version supported by this writer is currently ECSV 1.0.
ECSV allows either a space or a comma for delimiting values,
controlled by the delimiter configuration option.
If ecsv(delimiter=comma) is used, then removing
the YAML header will leave a CSV file that can be interpreted
by the CSV inputhandler or imported into other
CSV-capable applications.
Following the ECSV 1.0 specification, array-valued columns are supported. ECSV 1.0, required for working with array-valued columns, is supported by Astropy v4.3 and later.
The handler behaviour may be modified by specifying
one or more comma-separated name=value configuration options
in parentheses after the handler name, e.g.
"ecsv(delimiter=comma)".
The following options are available:
delimiter = comma|space
space" or "comma".If no output format is explicitly chosen,
writing to a filename with
the extension ".ecsv" (case insensitive)
will select ECSV format for output.
An example looks like this:
# %ECSV 1.0 # --- # datatype: # - # name: RECNO # datatype: int32 # - # name: SPECIES # datatype: string # - # name: NAME # datatype: string # description: How one should address the animal in public & private. # - # name: LEGS # datatype: int32 # meta: # utype: anatomy:limb # - # name: HEIGHT # datatype: float64 # unit: m # meta: # VOTable precision: 2 # - # name: MAMMAL # datatype: bool # meta: # name: animals.vot # Description: Some animals # Author: Mark Taylor RECNO SPECIES NAME LEGS HEIGHT MAMMAL 1 pig "Pigling Bland" 4 0.8 True 2 cow Daisy 4 2.0 True 3 goldfish Dobbin "" 0.05 False 4 ant "" 6 0.001 False 5 ant "" 6 0.001 False 6 "queen ant" Ma'am 6 0.002 False 7 human Mark 2 1.8 True