What is reStructuredText?

reStructuredText simple tables underline the header with equals signs and align columns with spaces.

Who uses it

Python documentation, Sphinx projects and anything on Read the Docs.

Writing reStructuredText

The equals-sign rule under the header is what tells Sphinx the first row is a header. Without it the table renders as data with no heading.

What it can hold

reStructuredText is a markup language. Grid tables are drawn with borders, and unlike most markup they can hold a cell with several lines in it. A machine can read it back, but only by following the conventions rather than a rule the format enforces.

It keeps

A line break inside a cell, which survives rather than ending the row.
A header that is marked as one, rather than being the first row by convention.

It cannot express

Types. Every value is text. A column of digits is indistinguishable from a column of numbers until something downstream decides to read it as one, which is where a leading zero usually disappears.
A null. An absent value and an empty one look the same, and nothing in the file says which was meant.
Nesting. Cells are flat, so structured values have to be flattened into extra columns or written into one cell as text.
A partial read. The document has to be complete to mean anything, so a truncated file yields nothing and a large one has to be held in memory whole.

What it looks like

Example reStructuredText

===  ================  =============  ==========  =====
id   name              role           started     hours
===  ================  =============  ==========  =====
007  Halima Yusuf      Analyst, data  2024-03-15  38.5
012  Jonah "Jo" Pryce  Engineer       2025-11-02
104  Wei Chen          Manager        2023-06-30  40
===  ================  =============  ==========  =====

Questions

How do I open reStructuredText files?

reStructuredText is written by Tablizer rather than read by it. Open the file in whichever tool the format belongs to.

Is reStructuredText a good format for sharing data?

It depends who is receiving it. Python documentation, Sphinx projects and anything on Read the Docs. If the recipient is outside that group, a plain CSV travels further than anything else.