Read CSV file with comma within fields in Python

Question

I need to read a CSV file which has fields that have a comma, so I have double quoted the fields which contains commas, such as:

1, "text1,text2", "text3, text4", a, b, c

But when I try to read the file in Python I get the fields separated by the commas, as following:

row[0] = 1
row[1] = text1
row[2] = text2
row[3] = text3
row[4] = text4
row[5] = a
row[6] = b
row[7] = c

I am reading the CSV file with the following code:

info = csv.reader(open('./info.csv'))  
for row in info :
    print row[0] + " * " + row[1] ...

Is it possible to read double quoted fields which contains a comma?

Asked By: David

||

Source

Answer 1

The Python csv module actually does support quoted fields, even by default. Your problem here is that Python by default does not skip the space, so you need to use skipinitialspace=True.

>>> s = StringIO.StringIO('1, "text1,text2", "text3, text4", a, b, c')
>>> list(csv.reader(s, skipinitialspace=True))
[['1', 'text1,text2', 'text3, text4', 'a', 'b', 'c']]

Answered By: Sven Marnach

Answer 2

You need to use a DictReader on the file content.

The result looks like this

import csv

with open(file_name, mode ='r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
  # reading the CSV file
  csvFile = csv.DictReader(file)
  # displaying the contents of the CSV file
  for line in csvFile:
    print(line["myAttribute"]

Answered By: Julien Delange

Read CSV file with comma within fields in Python

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