CSV is short for "Comma Separated Value" and is a ascii (i.e. plain text) file format. CSV is most commonly used by spreadsheet application such as Microsoft excel, the values are separated by commas, to indicate the separating points for coloums. CSV is most commonly used on the web as datafeeds to transfer data between databases. Many price comparison sites such as Kelkoo use csv datafeeds from companies such as Dixons to display price comparison for electronic items such as digital cameras (example here). CSV is therefore mainly a file exchange format, along with others such as XML.