How to read a specific file from a tar file using Windows?

Question

I have a tar file with several files compressed in it. I need to read one specific file (it is in csv format) using pandas. I tried to use the following code:

import tarfile
tar = tarfile.open('my_files.tar', 'r:gz')
f = tar.extractfile('some_files/need_to_be_read.csv')

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(f.read())

but it throws up the following error:

OSError: Expected file path name or file-like object, got <class 'bytes'> type

on the last line of the code. How do I go about this to read this file?

Nick ODell · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-28 01:11:57Z

1

When you call pandas.read_csv(), you need to give it a filename or file-like object. tar.extractfile() returns a file-like object. Instead of reading the file into memory, pass the file to Pandas.

So remove the .read() part:

import tarfile
tar = tarfile.open('my_files.tar', 'r:gz')
f = tar.extractfile('some_files/need_to_be_read.csv')

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(f)

answered Sep 28, 2020 at 1:11

Nick ODell

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