ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Interchange File Format

So imagine you have some toys that you want to share with your friends at their house. You can't just give them the toys to take home because you want to keep playing with them too. So you decide to make a list of all the toys you're giving your friends, and all the toys they're giving you, and you give that list to your parents.

That list is like an interchange file format. It's a way of sharing information between different people or programs. It tells the receiving person or program what information to expect and how it will be organized.

For example, if you wanted to send a picture from your phone to your computer, you would use an interchange file format like JPEG or PNG. The format tells your computer how to read the picture and display it correctly.

Or if you were sending information between two different accounting programs, you might use an interchange file format like CSV or XML. These formats tell the programs how the data is organized and what to expect so they can share information seamlessly.

Interchange file formats are like the instructions or guidelines for sharing information between different places or programs, so everyone can understand and use the information correctly.