Python parse CSV ignoring comma with double-quotes

40
votes

I have a CSV file with lines like this:

"AAA", "BBB", "Test, Test", "CCC"
"111", "222, 333", "XXX", "YYY, ZZZ"

and so on ...

I dont want to parse comma's under double-quotes. ie. My expected result should be

AAA
BBB
Test, Test
CCC

My code:

import csv
with open('values.csv', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    for row in reader:
        print row

I tried using csv package under python but no luck. The parses explodes all comma's.

Please let me know if I'm missing something

2
pythonpython-2.7csv

2 Answers

65
votes

This should do:

lines = '''"AAA", "BBB", "Test, Test", "CCC"
           "111", "222, 333", "XXX", "YYY, ZZZ"'''.splitlines()
for l in  csv.reader(lines, quotechar='"', delimiter=',',
                     quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL, skipinitialspace=True):
    print l
>>> ['AAA', 'BBB', 'Test, Test', 'CCC']
>>> ['111', '222, 333', 'XXX', 'YYY, ZZZ']
19
votes

You have spaces before the quote characters in your input. Set skipinitialspace to True to skip any whitespace following a delimiter:

When True, whitespace immediately following the delimiter is ignored. The default is False.

>>> import csv
>>> lines = '''\
... "AAA", "BBB", "Test, Test", "CCC"
... "111", "222, 333", "XXX", "YYY, ZZZ" 
... '''
>>> reader = csv.reader(lines.splitlines())
>>> next(reader)
['AAA', ' "BBB"', ' "Test', ' Test"', ' "CCC"']
>>> reader = csv.reader(lines.splitlines(), skipinitialspace=True)
>>> next(reader)
['AAA', 'BBB', 'Test, Test', 'CCC']