But it is terrible at that because there is no widely adhered to standard[1], the sender and receiver often disagree on the details of what exactly a CSV is.

[1]: yes, I know about RFC 4180. But csvs in the wild often don't follow it.

Agreed that that CSV construction isn't consistent even with standards.

That footprint seems to be dozens of variations to work with to find a library for?

CSV are universal though, text kind of like markdown, and that is my intended main point.