Is there a way to include commas in CSV columns without breaking the formatting?

Enclose the field in quotes, e.g.

field1_value,field2_value,"field 3,value",field4, etc...

See wikipedia.

Updated:

To encode a quote, use ", one double quote symbol in a field will be encoded as "", and the whole field will become """". So if you see the following in e.g. Excel:

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| regular_value |,,,"|  ,"", |"""   |"|
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the CSV file will contain:

regular_value,",,,""",","""",","""""""",""""

A comma is simply encapsulated using quotes, so , becomes ",".

A comma and quote needs to be encapsulated and quoted, so "," becomes """,""".

The problem with the CSV format, is there's not one spec, there are several accepted methods, with no way of distinguishing which should be used (for generate/interpret). I discussed all the methods to escape characters (newlines in that case, but same basic premise) in another post. Basically it comes down to using a CSV generation/escaping process for the intended users, and hoping the rest don't mind.

Reference spec document.

I found that some applications like Numbers in Mac ignore the double quote if there is space before it.

a, "b,c" doesn't work while a,"b,c" works.