what does export do on itunes?

Answer 1

Export sends whatever you're viewing (your playlist, your library, your podcasts, etc) as a Tab Delimited CSV file. Basically, what this is, is a simple text file with all your library information, separated by a tab space for each one.

The usefulness of this is...limited, for me at least. What you can do with it is import it into a program that supports CSV format (such as Excel, or OpenOffice Calc) and it will make a nicely formatted list with all your song data and information (name, title, artist, album, composer, genre, filename, filesize, etc.) organized by columns. That's what the tabs are for. It tells the program where the next cell in the row should start.

Other than sending this to friends (for whatever reason?) or maybe uploading it to a site that shares your playlists (again, why?) I don't see a reason to use it.

Maybe another answerer will come up with some useful applications? :)

Hope this helps!