CSV new-line character seen in unquoted field error

Question

the following code worked until today when I imported from a Windows machine and got this error:

new-line character seen in unquoted field – do you need to open the file in universal-newline mode?

import csv

class CSV:


    def __init__(self, file=None):
        self.file = file

    def read_file(self):
        data = []
        file_read = csv.reader(self.file)
        for row in file_read:
            data.append(row)
        return data

    def get_row_count(self):
        return len(self.read_file())

    def get_column_count(self):
        new_data = self.read_file()
        return len(new_data[0])

    def get_data(self, rows=1):
        data = self.read_file()

        return data[:rows]

How can I fix this issue?

def upload_configurator(request, id=None):
    """
    A view that allows the user to configurator the uploaded CSV.
    """
    upload = Upload.objects.get(id=id)
    csvobject = CSV(upload.filepath)

    upload.num_records = csvobject.get_row_count()
    upload.num_columns = csvobject.get_column_count()
    upload.save()

    form = ConfiguratorForm()

    row_count = csvobject.get_row_count()
    colum_count = csvobject.get_column_count()
    first_row = csvobject.get_data(rows=1)
    first_two_rows = csvobject.get_data(rows=5)

Asked By: GrantU

||

Source

Answer 1

Try to run dos2unix on your windows imported files first

Answered By: rectummelancolique

Answer 2

It’ll be good to see the csv file itself, but this might work for you, give it a try, replace:

file_read = csv.reader(self.file)

with:

file_read = csv.reader(self.file, dialect=csv.excel_tab)

Or, open a file with universal newline mode and pass it to csv.reader, like:

reader = csv.reader(open(self.file, 'rU'), dialect=csv.excel_tab)

Or, use splitlines(), like this:

def read_file(self):
    with open(self.file, 'r') as f:
        data = [row for row in csv.reader(f.read().splitlines())]
    return data

Answered By: alecxe

Answer 3

I realize this is an old post, but I ran into the same problem and don’t see the correct answer so I will give it a try

Python Error:

_csv.Error: new-line character seen in unquoted field

Caused by trying to read Macintosh (pre OS X formatted) CSV files. These are text files that use CR for end of line. If using MS Office make sure you select either plain CSV format or CSV (MS-DOS). Do not use CSV (Macintosh) as save-as type.

My preferred EOL version would be LF (Unix/Linux/Apple), but I don’t think MS Office provides the option to save in this format.

Answered By: g.kovatchev

Answer 4

For Mac OS X, save your CSV file in “Windows Comma Separated (.csv)” format.

Answered By: BoltzmannBrain

Answer 5

If this happens to you on mac (as it did to me):

Save the file as CSV (MS-DOS Comma-Separated)

Run the following script

with open(csv_filename, 'rU') as csvfile:
    csvreader = csv.reader(csvfile)
    for row in csvreader:
        print ', '.join(row)

Answered By: Nimo

Answer 6

This worked for me on OSX.

# allow variable to opened as files
from io import StringIO

# library to map other strange (accented) characters back into UTF-8
from unidecode import unidecode

# cleanse input file with Windows formating to plain UTF-8 string
with open(filename, 'rb') as fID:
    uncleansedBytes = fID.read()
    # decode the file using the correct encoding scheme
    # (probably this old windows one) 
    uncleansedText = uncleansedBytes.decode('Windows-1252')

    # replace carriage-returns with new-lines
    cleansedText = uncleansedText.replace('r', 'n')

    # map any other non UTF-8 characters into UTF-8
    asciiText = unidecode(cleansedText)

# read each line of the csv file and store as an array of dicts, 
# use first line as field names for each dict. 
reader = csv.DictReader(StringIO(cleansedText))
for line_entry in reader:
    # do something with your read data

Answered By: Resonance

Answer 7

This is an error that I faced. I had saved .csv file in MAC OSX.

While saving, save it as “Windows Comma Separated Values (.csv)” which resolved the issue.

Answered By: Suraj

Answer 8

I know this has been answered for quite some time but not solve my problem. I am using DictReader and StringIO for my csv reading due to some other complications. I was able to solve problem more simply by replacing delimiters explicitly:

with urllib.request.urlopen(q) as response:
    raw_data = response.read()
    encoding = response.info().get_content_charset('utf8') 
    data = raw_data.decode(encoding)
    if 'rn' not in data:
        # proably a windows delimited thing...try to update it
        data = data.replace('r', 'rn')

Might not be reasonable for enormous CSV files, but worked well for my use case.

Answered By: Dougyfresh

Answer 9

Alternative and fast solution : I faced the same error. I reopened the “wierd” csv file in GNUMERIC on my lubuntu machine and exported the file as csv file. This corrected the issue.

Answered By: p699

CSV new-line character seen in unquoted field error

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