How to use delimiter for csv in python

ok, here is what i understood from your question. You are writing a csv file from python but when you are opening that file into some other application like excel or open office they are showing the complete row in one cell rather than each word in individual cell. I am right??

if i am then please try this, 

import csv

with open(r"C:\\test.csv", "wb") as csv_file:
    writer = csv.writer(csv_file, delimiter =",",quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)
    writer.writerow(["a","b"])

you have to set the delimiter = ","


Your code is blanking out your file:

import csv
workingdir = "C:\Mer\Ven\sample"
csvfile = workingdir+"\test3.csv"
f=open(csvfile,'wb') # opens file for writing (erases contents)
csv.writer(f, delimiter =' ',quotechar =',',quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL)

if you want to read the file in, you will need to use csv.reader and open the file for reading.

import csv
workingdir = "C:\Mer\Ven\sample"
csvfile = workingdir+"\test3.csv"
f=open(csvfile,'rb') # opens file for reading
reader = csv.reader(f)
for line in reader:
    print line

If you want to write that back out to a new file with different delimiters, you can create a new file and specify those delimiters and write out each line (instead of printing the tuple).


CSV Files with Custom Delimiters

By default, a comma is used as a delimiter in a CSV file. However, some CSV files can use delimiters other than a comma. Few popular ones are | and \t.

import csv
data_list = [["SN", "Name", "Contribution"],
             [1, "Linus Torvalds", "Linux Kernel"],
             [2, "Tim Berners-Lee", "World Wide Web"],
             [3, "Guido van Rossum", "Python Programming"]]
with open('innovators.csv', 'w', newline='') as file:
    writer = csv.writer(file, delimiter='|')
    writer.writerows(data_list)

output:

SN|Name|Contribution
1|Linus Torvalds|Linux Kernel
2|Tim Berners-Lee|World Wide Web
3|Guido van Rossum|Python Programming

Write CSV files with quotes

import csv

row_list = [["SN", "Name", "Contribution"],
             [1, "Linus Torvalds", "Linux Kernel"],
             [2, "Tim Berners-Lee", "World Wide Web"],
             [3, "Guido van Rossum", "Python Programming"]]
with open('innovators.csv', 'w', newline='') as file:
    writer = csv.writer(file, quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC, delimiter=';')
    writer.writerows(row_list)

output:

"SN";"Name";"Contribution"
1;"Linus Torvalds";"Linux Kernel"
2;"Tim Berners-Lee";"World Wide Web"
3;"Guido van Rossum";"Python Programming"

As you can see, we have passed csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC to the quoting parameter. It is a constant defined by the csv module.

csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC specifies the writer object that quotes should be added around the non-numeric entries.

There are 3 other predefined constants you can pass to the quoting parameter:

  • csv.QUOTE_ALL - Specifies the writer object to write CSV file with quotes around all the entries.
  • csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL - Specifies the writer object to only quote those fields which contain special characters (delimiter, quotechar or any characters in lineterminator)
  • csv.QUOTE_NONE - Specifies the writer object that none of the entries should be quoted. It is the default value.
import csv

row_list = [["SN", "Name", "Contribution"],
             [1, "Linus Torvalds", "Linux Kernel"],
             [2, "Tim Berners-Lee", "World Wide Web"],
             [3, "Guido van Rossum", "Python Programming"]]
with open('innovators.csv', 'w', newline='') as file:
    writer = csv.writer(file, quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC,
                        delimiter=';', quotechar='*')
    writer.writerows(row_list)

output:

*SN*;*Name*;*Contribution*
1;*Linus Torvalds*;*Linux Kernel*
2;*Tim Berners-Lee*;*World Wide Web*
3;*Guido van Rossum*;*Python Programming*

Here, we can see that quotechar='*' parameter instructs the writer object to use * as quote for all non-numeric values.

Tags:

Python

Csv

Delimiter

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