Python - how to read/parse csv like line?

Question

I have done some search but most answer is about reading a complete csv file and none of these is like the problem I'm facing.

I'm trying to read a file from net using urllib2:

request = urllib2.Request('http://.../tv.txt')
response = urllib2.urlopen(request)
lines = response.readlines()
for line in lines:
    ...

The "line" format looks like these:

"ABC", "XYZ,MNO", "KLM"
"ABC", "MN"
"ABC", "123", "10", "OPPA GANGNAM STYLE", "LADY"

As seen above, these lines are not actually CSV lines. The number of columns keeps changing.

Is there a way to split each line into a list? The desire result should be:

["ABC", "XYZ,MNO", "KLM"]
["ABC", "MN"]
["ABC", "123", "10", "OPPA GANGNAM STYLE", "LADY"]

I've tried using line.split(",") but it cannot split correctly because there is comma inside each pair of double quotes.

Please help me if you know how to. Thank you very much.

Cheers,

PHP-Python-Java-MySQL-newbie.

Ryabchenko Alexander · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-31 10:45:17Z

8

use the csv module, it does what you need.

yourstring= '"ABC", "XYZ,MNO", "KLM"\n"ABC", "MN"\n"ABC", "123", "10", "OPPA GANGNAM STYLE", "LADY"'

import csv
import io

class MyDialect(csv.Dialect):
    strict = True
    skipinitialspace = True
    quoting = csv.QUOTE_ALL
    delimiter = ','
    quotechar = '"'
    lineterminator = '\n'


b = io.StringIO(yourstring)
r = csv.reader(b, MyDialect())

for i in r:
    print len(i), ':',' @ '.join(i)

edited Jan 31, 2019 at 10:45

Ryabchenko Alexander

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answered Feb 21, 2013 at 10:12

LtWorf

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3 Comments

markbse Over a year ago

As mentioned in the question, I have tried csv module. If you can point me what function in csv module, that'd be great. I have tried for row in csv.reader([line]): print row per this docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html#examples but no success

markbse Over a year ago

Thank you. While waiting I've changed source from CSV to JSON format so didn't test your script, but will mark this as answer then.

einpoklum Over a year ago

Can you add a few lines regarding the default dialect?

Ryabchenko Alexander · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-31 10:29:41Z

0

import csv
import io

input='''"ABC", "XYZ,MNO", "KLM"
"ABC", "MN"
"ABC", "123", "10", "OPPA GANGNAM STYLE", "LADY"'''

resader = csv.reader(
    io.StringIO(input), 
    delimiter = ',', 
    quotechar = '"', 
    skipinitialspace = True,
)
for row in resader:
    print(row)

will result as

['ABC', 'XYZ,MNO', 'KLM']
['ABC', 'MN']
['ABC', '123', '10', 'OPPA GANGNAM STYLE', 'LADY']

answered Jan 31, 2019 at 10:29

Ryabchenko Alexander

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