python reading csv files comma issue

Question

I have a small issue while trying to parse some data from a table. My program reads a row of the table and then puts it in a list as a string (Python does this as default with a reader.next() function). Everything is fine until there aren't any commas separating some text on the same table space. In this case, the program thinks the comma is a separator and makes 2 list indexes instead of one, and this makes things like list[0].split(';') impossible.

I suck at explaining verbally, so let me illustrate:

csv_file = | House floors | Wooden, metal and golden | 2000 |   # Illustration of an excel table

reader = csv.reader(open('csv_file.csv', 'r'))
row = reader.next()  # row: ['House floors;Wooden', 'metal and golden; 2000']
columns = row.split(';')  # columns: ['House floors, Wooden', 'metal and golden', '2000']

# But obviously what i want is this:
# columns : ['House floors', 'Wooden, metal and golden', '2000']

Thank you very much for your help!

why are you splitting on ';' can you show some sample data?

Anurag Uniyal
– Anurag Uniyal

2012-11-15 19:29:14 +00:00
Commented Nov 15, 2012 at 19:29 — Anurag Uniyal
– Anurag Uniyal, Commented Nov 15, 2012 at 19:29

jassinm · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-15 19:29:49Z

5

set the delimiter http://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html

csv.reader(fh, delimiter='|')

answered Nov 15, 2012 at 19:29

jassinm

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3 Comments

stensootla Over a year ago

The problem is not the delimiter, as my delimiter is ';', not a comma.

jassinm Over a year ago

then set it to ; and the split by |. not clear from your example

stensootla Over a year ago

Ok , this worked. Thank you! But may i ask you one more thing. Does the deliminter mean the seperator between columns? Because when i set the delimiter to '|', my python idle still prints the rows with a ';' between each column data.

Anurag Uniyal · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-15 19:38:54Z

0

You need to set correct delimiter which in your case would be | or ; (not clear from OP's example) e.g.

csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=';')

Assuming you have data like "House floors;Wooden, metal and golden;2000" you can easily parse it using csv module

import csv
import StringIO
data = "House floors;Wooden, metal and golden;2000"

csvfile = StringIO.StringIO(data)

for row in csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter=';'):
    print row

output:

['House floors', 'Wooden, metal and golden', '2000']

edited Nov 15, 2012 at 19:38

answered Nov 15, 2012 at 19:28

Anurag Uniyal

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