Can I import a CSV file and automatically infer the delimiter?

The csv module seems to recommend using the csv sniffer for this problem.

They give the following example, which I’ve adapted for your case.

with open('example.csv', 'rb') as csvfile:  # python 3: 'r',newline=""
    dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(1024), delimiters=";,")
    csvfile.seek(0)
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect)
    # ... process CSV file contents here ...

Let’s try it out.

[9:13am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] cat example 
#!/usr/bin/env python
import csv

def parse(filename):
    with open(filename, 'rb') as csvfile:
        dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(), delimiters=';,')
        csvfile.seek(0)
        reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect)

        for line in reader:
            print line

def main():
    print 'Comma Version:'
    parse('comma_separated.csv')

    print
    print 'Semicolon Version:'
    parse('semicolon_separated.csv')

    print
    print 'An example from the question (kingdom.csv)'
    parse('kingdom.csv')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

And our sample inputs

[9:13am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] cat comma_separated.csv 
test,box,foo
round,the,bend

[9:13am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] cat semicolon_separated.csv 
round;the;bend
who;are;you

[9:22am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] cat kingdom.csv 
ReleveAnnee;ReleveMois;NoOrdre;TitreRMC;AdopCSRegleVote;AdopCSAbs;AdoptCSContre;NoCELEX;ProposAnnee;ProposChrono;ProposOrigine;NoUniqueAnnee;NoUniqueType;NoUniqueChrono;PropoSplittee;Suite2LecturePE;Council PATH;Notes
1999;1;1;1999/83/EC: Council Decision of 18 January 1999 authorising the Kingdom of Denmark to apply or to continue to apply reductions in, or exemptions from, excise duties on certain mineral oils used for specific purposes, in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 8(4) of Directive 92/81/EEC;U;;;31999D0083;1998;577;COM;NULL;CS;NULL;;;;Propos* are missing on Celex document
1999;1;2;1999/81/EC: Council Decision of 18 January 1999 authorising the Kingdom of Spain to apply a measure derogating from Articles 2 and 28a(1) of the Sixth Directive (77/388/EEC) on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes;U;;;31999D0081;1998;184;COM;NULL;CS;NULL;;;;Propos* are missing on Celex document

And if we execute the example program:

[9:14am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] ./example 
Comma Version:
['test', 'box', 'foo']
['round', 'the', 'bend']

Semicolon Version:
['round', 'the', 'bend']
['who', 'are', 'you']

An example from the question (kingdom.csv)
['ReleveAnnee', 'ReleveMois', 'NoOrdre', 'TitreRMC', 'AdopCSRegleVote', 'AdopCSAbs', 'AdoptCSContre', 'NoCELEX', 'ProposAnnee', 'ProposChrono', 'ProposOrigine', 'NoUniqueAnnee', 'NoUniqueType', 'NoUniqueChrono', 'PropoSplittee', 'Suite2LecturePE', 'Council PATH', 'Notes']
['1999', '1', '1', '1999/83/EC: Council Decision of 18 January 1999 authorising the Kingdom of Denmark to apply or to continue to apply reductions in, or exemptions from, excise duties on certain mineral oils used for specific purposes, in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 8(4) of Directive 92/81/EEC', 'U', '', '', '31999D0083', '1998', '577', 'COM', 'NULL', 'CS', 'NULL', '', '', '', 'Propos* are missing on Celex document']
['1999', '1', '2', '1999/81/EC: Council Decision of 18 January 1999 authorising the Kingdom of Spain to apply a measure derogating from Articles 2 and 28a(1) of the Sixth Directive (77/388/EEC) on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes', 'U', '', '', '31999D0081', '1998', '184', 'COM', 'NULL', 'CS', 'NULL', '', '', '', 'Propos* are missing on Celex document']

It’s also probably worth noting what version of python I’m using.

[9:20am][wlynch@watermelon /tmp] python -V
Python 2.7.2

I don’t think there can be a perfectly general solution to this (one of the reasons I might use , as a delimiter is that some of my data fields need to be able to include ;…). A simple heuristic for deciding might be to simply read the first line (or more), count how many , and ; characters it contains (possibly ignoring those inside quotes, if whatever creates your .csv files quotes entries properly and consistently), and guess that the more frequent of the two is the right delimiter.

Given a project that deals with both , (comma) and | (vertical bar) delimited CSV files, which are well formed, I tried the following (as given at https://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html#csv.Sniffer):

dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(1024), delimiters=',|')

However, on a |-delimited file, the “Could not determine delimiter” exception was returned. It seemed reasonable to speculate that the sniff heuristic might work best if each line has the same number of delimiters (not counting whatever might be enclosed in quotes). So, instead of reading the first 1024 bytes of the file, I tried reading the first two lines in their entirety:

temp_lines = csvfile.readline() + 'n' + csvfile.readline()
dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(temp_lines, delimiters=',|')

So far, this is working well for me.

And if you’re using DictReader you can do that:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import csv

def parse(filename):
    with open(filename, 'rb') as csvfile:
        dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvfile.read(), delimiters=';,')
        csvfile.seek(0)
        reader = csv.DictReader(csvfile, dialect=dialect)

        for line in reader:
            print(line['ReleveAnnee'])

I used this with Python 3.5 and it worked this way.