File Formats at a Glance
CSV
name,age,city
Alice,25,NYC
Bob,30,LA
✓ Human-readable
✓ Universal support
✓ Spreadsheet-friendly
✗ All values are strings
✗ No nested data
✗ Large file size
Best for: small data, sharing
JSON
{"name": "Alice",
"age": 25,
"addr": {"city":..}}
✓ Preserves types
✓ Nested structures
✓ API standard
✗ No date type
✗ Large file size
✗ Slow for analytics
Best for: APIs, config files
Parquet
col1
col2
col3
✓ Full schema + types
✓ Small (compressed)
✓ Fast column reads
✗ Not human-readable
✗ Needs pyarrow lib
✗ Bad for single rows
Best for: analytics, big data