CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythoncsvpython-3.x
kyrenia
kyrenia

Reputation: 5575

Importing file format similar to csv file with | delimiters into Python

I have a data format, that appears similar to a csv file, however has vertical bars between character strings, but not between Boolean fields. For example:

 |2000|,|code_no|,|first name, last name|,,,0,|word string|,0
 |2000|,|code_no|,|full name|,,,0,|word string|,0

I'm not sure what format this is (it is saved as a txt file). What format is this, and how would i import into python?

For referece, I had been trying to use:

with open(csv_file, 'rb') as f:
    r = unicodecsv.reader(f)

And then stripping out the | from the start and end of the fields. This works ok, with the exception of fields which have a comma in them (e.g. |first name, last name| where the field gets split because of the comma.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 53

Answers (2)

Sci Prog
Sci Prog

Reputation: 2691

Have you tried .reader(f, delimiter=',', quotechar='|') ?

Upvotes: 3

ShadowRanger
ShadowRanger

Reputation: 155477

It looks like the pipes are being used as quote characters, not delimiters. Have you tried initializing the reader to use pipe ('|') as the quote character, and perhaps to use csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC as the quoting rules?

 csv.reader(f, quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)

Upvotes: 4

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