Edit CSV file with Python

Question

I have a CSV that looks like this

"String1","variablelengthstring1","No"
"String2","variablelengthstring2","No"

String1 and string2 does NOT contain the characters " or ,

variablelengthstring1 and variablelengthstring2 does NOT contain the characters " or ,

The output file should look like this

String1 variablelengthstring1
String2 variablelengthstring2

So I want to remove the last 6 chars on each line, i.e.
","No"

Then, I want to remove all " from the file

Then, I want to replace all , with a space

That should safely accomplish what I am trying to do

What have you tried so far? Please share the code.

Soumendra
– Soumendra

2022-12-30 05:34:50 +00:00
Commented Dec 30, 2022 at 5:34 — Soumendra
– Soumendra, Commented Dec 30, 2022 at 5:34

Michael M. · Accepted Answer · 2022-12-30 05:50:10Z

2

The easiest way is to just create a program that reads the file line by line, splitting each line up with .split(','), removing all "s from the string, then printing the first parts. Like this:

with open('test.csv') as csv:
    for row in csv.readlines():
        cols = [s.replace('"', '') for s in row.split(',')]
        print(cols[0], cols[1])

If you need to output it to a file, then you can use redirection in your command line. Just run the program like this:

python program.py > output.txt

Alternatively, you can use another nested with statement and .writelines(), like this:

lines = []
with open('test.csv') as csv:
    for row in csv.readlines():
        cols = [s.replace('"', '') for s in row.split(',')]
        lines.append(f'{cols[0]} {cols[1]}\n')

with open('out.txt', 'w') as out:
    out.writelines(lines)

edited Dec 30, 2022 at 5:50

answered Dec 30, 2022 at 5:37

Michael M.

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4 Comments

kjsmita6 Over a year ago

Shouldn't depend on console redirection to write it back to a file, should just write it directly. Otherwise yes this works fine.

Michael M. Over a year ago

@kjsmita6 I've updated my answer with an alternative example of writing the lines directly to a file. It should be all good now.

investo me Over a year ago

Worked perfectly, thank you. can I arrange in decending order by numerical value of variablelengthstring1

Michael M. Over a year ago

@investome If you need to rearrange the output, then you'll want to first read the CSV into a list, then use the .sort() method. If you need more help with that, you might want to ask another question.

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