How to load a tsv file into a Pandas DataFrame?

Question

I'm trying to get a TAB-delimited (tsv) file loaded into a pandas DataFrame.

This is what I'm trying and the error I'm getting:

>>> df1 = DataFrame(csv.reader(open('c:/~/trainSetRel3.txt'), delimiter='\t'))

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#28>", line 1, in <module>
    df1 = DataFrame(csv.reader(open('c:/~/trainSetRel3.txt'), delimiter='\t'))
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\pandas\core\frame.py", line 318, in __init__
    raise PandasError('DataFrame constructor not properly called!')
PandasError: DataFrame constructor not properly called!

For those coming to this answer in 2017+, use read_csv('path_to_file', sep='\t'). See this answer below — Ted Petrou
– Ted Petrou, Commented Nov 6, 2017 at 16:49
read_csv defaults to comma as the separator, so read_table is more convenient for TSV. — Nicky McCurdy
– Nicky McCurdy, Commented Oct 1, 2023 at 21:40

Rick · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-05 10:42:37Z

295

The .read_csv function does what you want:

pd.read_csv('c:/~/trainSetRel3.txt', sep='\t')

If you have a header, you can pass header=0.

pd.read_csv('c:/~/trainSetRel3.txt', sep='\t', header=0)

Note: Prior 17.0, pd.DataFrame.from_csv was used (it is now deprecated and the .from_csv documentation link redirects to the page for pd.read_csv).

edited Jun 5, 2021 at 10:42

Rick

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answered Mar 11, 2012 at 6:06

huon

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10 Comments

Yuri Astrakhan Over a year ago

I had some issues with this method - it was very slow and failed indexing at the end. Instead, i used read_table(), which worked much faster and without the extra param.

rafaelvalle Over a year ago

Note that as of 17.0 from_csv is discouraged: use pd.read_csv instead!

Archie Over a year ago

I had to use the following: DataFrame.read_csv('filepath.tsv', sep=' ', header=0)

smci Over a year ago

This is a bad answer; you can read TSV natively with pd.read_csv/read_table, you just need to set delim_whitespace=True or sep

Arayan Singh Over a year ago

@rafaelvalle added deprecated notice

|

Kamil Sindi · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-07 15:42:04Z

112

As of 17.0 from_csv is discouraged.

Use pd.read_csv(fpath, sep='\t') or pd.read_table(fpath).

edited Jan 7, 2016 at 15:42

answered Dec 31, 2015 at 16:13

Kamil Sindi

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2 Comments

ManuelSchneid3r Over a year ago

Note: read_table is deprecated since version 0.24.0. Use pandas.read_csv() instead.

yodavid Over a year ago

Apparently read_table was later un-deprecated in 0.25.0.

Cristian Ciupitu · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-06 08:31:18Z

72

Use pandas.read_table(filepath). The default separator is tab.

edited Apr 6, 2021 at 8:31

Cristian Ciupitu

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answered Mar 11, 2012 at 15:34

Wes McKinney

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1 Comment

scarecrow Over a year ago

read_table doesn't require any parameters. Perfectly working.

Mohsin Ashraf · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-04 05:36:25Z

25

Try this

df = pd.read_csv("rating-data.tsv",sep='\t')
df.head()

You actually need to fix the sep parameter.

edited Aug 4, 2019 at 5:36

answered Aug 1, 2019 at 5:14

Mohsin Ashraf

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Comments

Antonio Correia · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-18 06:50:47Z

9

open file, save as .csv and then apply

df = pd.read_csv('apps.csv', sep='\t')

for any other format also, just change the sep tag

edited Feb 18, 2019 at 6:50

Antonio Correia

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answered Feb 10, 2018 at 17:28

ankit srivastava

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Comments

Đ.J vicky · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-16 13:36:56Z

3

data = pd.read_csv('your_dataset.tsv', delimiter = '\t', quoting = 3)

You can use a delimiter to separate data, quoting = 3 helps to clear quotes in datasst

edited Feb 16, 2021 at 13:36

answered Feb 16, 2021 at 13:23

Đ.J vicky

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Comments

Stefan Ollinger · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-17 20:18:34Z

2

df = pd.read_csv('filename.csv', sep='\t', header=0)

You can load the tsv file directly into pandas data frame by specifying delimitor and header.

edited Apr 17, 2020 at 20:18

Stefan Ollinger

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answered Apr 15, 2020 at 17:24

Kofi

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Comments

Emeka Boris Ama · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-21 08:22:59Z

1

use this

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_fwf('xxxx.tsv')

answered Jun 21, 2022 at 8:22

Emeka Boris Ama

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1 Comment

Mutoh Over a year ago

Why this instead of read_csv with sep='\t'?

Robert Columbia · Accepted Answer · 2021-02-21 01:20:08Z

0

Try this:

import pandas as pd
DataFrame = pd.read_csv("dataset.tsv", sep="\t")

edited Feb 21, 2021 at 1:20

Robert Columbia

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answered Feb 21, 2021 at 1:17

peaceloving

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