How to delete only one row from a CSV file with python?
Question:
I’m trying to make a program which stores a list of names in a CSV file, and I’m trying to add a function to delete rows, which isn’t working as it deletes everything in the CSV file.
I’ve tried using writer.writerow(row)
, which hasn’t worked.
memberName = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted.")
imp = open('mycsv.csv' , 'rb')
out = open('mycsv.csv' , 'wb')
writer = csv.writer(out)
for row in csv.reader(imp):
if row == memberName:
writer.writerow(row)
imp.close()
out.close()
I expected the program to only delete rows which contained memberName
, but it deletes every row in the CSV file.
How do I change it to only delete a single row?
Answers:
You can’t write to the same file while reading it. Instead, use another file for output, e.g.:
import csv
member_name = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted: ")
with open('in_file.csv') as in_file, open('out_file.csv', 'w') as out_file:
reader = csv.reader(in_file)
writer = csv.writer(out_file)
for row in reader:
if member_name not in row: # exclude a specific row
writer.writerow(row)
Alternatively, you could store needed rows in memory and write them back to the input file after resetting the file pointer:
import csv
member_name = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted: ")
with open('in_file.csv', 'r+') as in_file:
reader = csv.reader(in_file)
rows = [row for row in csv.reader(in_file) if member_name not in row]
in_file.seek(0)
in_file.truncate()
writer = csv.writer(in_file)
writer.writerows(rows)
This worked for me: you could write the contents of the csv file to a list, then edit the list in python, then write the list back to the csv file.
lines = list()
memberName = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted.")
with open('mycsv.csv', 'r') as readFile:
reader = csv.reader(readFile)
for row in reader:
lines.append(row)
for field in row:
if field == memberName:
lines.remove(row)
with open('mycsv.csv', 'w') as writeFile:
writer = csv.writer(writeFile)
writer.writerows(lines)
I’m trying to make a program which stores a list of names in a CSV file, and I’m trying to add a function to delete rows, which isn’t working as it deletes everything in the CSV file.
I’ve tried using writer.writerow(row)
, which hasn’t worked.
memberName = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted.")
imp = open('mycsv.csv' , 'rb')
out = open('mycsv.csv' , 'wb')
writer = csv.writer(out)
for row in csv.reader(imp):
if row == memberName:
writer.writerow(row)
imp.close()
out.close()
I expected the program to only delete rows which contained memberName
, but it deletes every row in the CSV file.
How do I change it to only delete a single row?
You can’t write to the same file while reading it. Instead, use another file for output, e.g.:
import csv
member_name = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted: ")
with open('in_file.csv') as in_file, open('out_file.csv', 'w') as out_file:
reader = csv.reader(in_file)
writer = csv.writer(out_file)
for row in reader:
if member_name not in row: # exclude a specific row
writer.writerow(row)
Alternatively, you could store needed rows in memory and write them back to the input file after resetting the file pointer:
import csv
member_name = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted: ")
with open('in_file.csv', 'r+') as in_file:
reader = csv.reader(in_file)
rows = [row for row in csv.reader(in_file) if member_name not in row]
in_file.seek(0)
in_file.truncate()
writer = csv.writer(in_file)
writer.writerows(rows)
This worked for me: you could write the contents of the csv file to a list, then edit the list in python, then write the list back to the csv file.
lines = list()
memberName = input("Please enter a member's name to be deleted.")
with open('mycsv.csv', 'r') as readFile:
reader = csv.reader(readFile)
for row in reader:
lines.append(row)
for field in row:
if field == memberName:
lines.remove(row)
with open('mycsv.csv', 'w') as writeFile:
writer = csv.writer(writeFile)
writer.writerows(lines)