A TSV file is a simple text file that stores data in a tabular structure. Each record of the table is one line in the TSV file. And each value of a column is separated from the next value using a tab. So, a TSV file is a variation of the CSV file. Please note that in a CSV file, each value is separated from the next value using a comma, while in a TSV file, the values are separated using a tab.

In one of our previous articles, we discussed how to read a CSV file using the pandas.read_csv() function. We can use the same function to read a TSV file. The only difference is we need to specify the sep parameter in the function. In the case of a TSV file, the sep parameter should be “\t”.

We can use the following Python code to read a TSV file using the pandas Python library.

import pandas

df = pandas.read_csv("iris.tsv", sep='\t')
print(df.head())

The output of the above program will be like the following:

   sepal_length  sepal_width  petal_length  petal_width species
0           5.1          3.5           1.4          0.2  setosa
1           4.9          3.0           1.4          0.2  setosa
2           4.7          3.2           1.3          0.2  setosa
3           4.6          3.1           1.5          0.2  setosa
4           5.0          3.6           1.4          0.2  setosa