# File formats[¶](https://doc.dataiku.com/dss/latest/formats/index.html#file-formats "Permalink to this headline")

Datasets based on files require a file input format.

This section contains detailed information on the supported formats and options.

* Delimiter-separated values (CSV / TSV)

+ Quoting and escaping styles

- Excel-style

* Example

- Unix-style

* Example

- Escaping only

* Example

- No escaping, no quoting

+ Usage in datasets

+ Usage in recipes

* Fixed width

* Parquet

+ Requirements

+ Applicability

+ Limitations and issues

- Case-sensitivity

- Related to Hive

- Related to Impala

- Misc

* Avro

+ Applicability

- Reading Avro files

- Reading Avro files / multiple versions

- Writing Avro files

* Hive ORCFile

+ Compatibility

+ Limitations

* XML

+ Handling the structure

- Selection of the data to load

- JSON representation

* Example

+ Using XPath to select data

- Limitations

- Selecting values explicitly

* Example

* JSON

+ Example

* Excel

* ESRI Shapefiles

+ Vecmath library

* Delta Lake
