We look at CSV files in Excel all the time. In fact, Excel assumes any file with a .csv extension to contain comma-separated values. It's easy to create one. The basic idea is that commas serve as delimiters and each row begins a new record.
In English, that means that if I want to save some address info into a CSV file, then in a text editor like Notepad, the data will look like this:
John Smith, 42 Main St, Houston, TX, 77005
Frank Jones, 19 Timberlake, Evanston, IL, 60201
Each field is separated by a comma, and each record begins on a new row/line. Excel will display each field in its own cell automatically. Now, what happens if a field contains a comma? How would you handle John Smith, Jr.? Simple, with double quotes:
"John Smith, Jr.", 42 Main St, Houston, TX 77005
Try to make the file in Notepad, save it with a .csv extension, and then double-click it and Excel will probably be chosen to open it. If not, then just open it in Excel and you'll see that the values don't all get lumped into the first cells.
As you can imagine, it's easy to write out to a text file in CSV format using basic
Java IO stuff.
God bless,
Stephen