[Tutor] csv manipulation

[Serdar Tumgoren]

sorry -- forgot to complete my thought in 2nd graf. see below...

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 9:29 AM, Serdar Tumgoren <zstumgoren at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I spent a day trying to adapt Mr. Gailer's simple and elegant code to the
> csv version suggested by Mr. Johnson, but I can't seem to get it working.
>
> I adapted the example to my particular use case, but the problem occurs
> regardless of the dataset used: Namely, when I loop through the items in the
> list of fields and use "writerows" to print to a csv file, the loop splits
> the entire line and prints every letter, space, etc. separated by a comma
> (rather than the name-attribute pairings I'm aiming for on each line).
>
> So my starting dataset:
>
> "White, Barry","brave","tall","52"
> "Rick Davis","confident","average","48"
> "Jane Doe","pretty","short","40","New York"
> "Smith, Janet","organized","65","San Francisco","CA"
> "John Quincy","lazy","tall","35"
> "Mike Leeds","curious","38"
>
> ...looks like this:
>
> W,h,i,t,e,",", ,B,a,r,r,y
> b,r,a,v,e
> W,h,i,t,e,",", ,B,a,r,r,y
> t,a,l,l
> W,h,i,t,e,",", ,B,a,r,r,y
> 5,2
> R,i,c,k, ,D,a,v,i,s
> c,o,n,f,i,d,e,n,t
> R,i,c,k, ,D,a,v,i,s
> a,v,e,r,a,g,e
> R,i,c,k, ,D,a,v,i,s
> 4,8
> <snip>
>
> ...instead of the desired result:
>
> White, Barry    brave
> White, Barry    tall
> White, Barry    52
> Rick Davis      confident
> Rick Davis      average
> Rick Davis      48
> Jane Doe        pretty
> Jane Doe        short
> <snip>
>
> When print to the shell, however, I get the results I'm looking for.
>
>
> Below is my code. Can someone tell me how I'm botching the use of the
> "writerows" method? Also, on a separate note, is it possible and necessary
> to close the input and output files when using csv module? I keep getting a
> "module has no close method" error when I try to close the files...
>
>  1 #!/usr/bin/python
>  2
>  3 import csv
>  4
>  5
>  6 reader = csv.reader(open('/path/to/infile2.txt',    'rb'))
>  7
>  8
>  9 writer = csv.writer(open('/path/to/outfile2.txt',    'wb'))
> 10
> 11 #loop through fields in row
> 12 for line in reader:
> 13     #name is the first field in row
> 14     name = line[0]
> 15     #create list of person's attributes
> 16     attributes = line[1:]
> 17
> 18     for characteristic in attributes:
> 19         #print to shell for testing
> 20         print name + "\t" + characteristic
> 21
> 22         #write rows to file
> 23         writer.writerows((name,characteristic))
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:31 PM, Kent Johnson <kent37 at tds.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:28 AM, bob gailer <bgailer at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > qsqgeekyogdty at tiscali.co.uk wrote:
>> >>
>> >> hello,
>> >> i have the follwoing csv file:
>> >>
>> >> "Berat","Berat","Kuçovë","Skrapar"
>>
>> > There is a csv module, but for something this simple the following will
>> > suffice:
>>
>> as long as none of the data fields include a comma...given that the
>> equivalent program using csv is barely longer than your example, and
>> more robust, it seems worth using to me. For example (untested):
>>
>> import csv
>>
>> inputFile= open(path-to-the-input-file, 'rb')
>> reader = csv.reader(inputFile)
>> outputFile = open(path-to-the-output-file, 'wb')
>> writer = csv.writer(outputFile)
>>
>> for line in reader:
>>  region = line [0]
>>  for district in line[1:]:
>>   writer.write((region, district))
>> inputFile.close()
>> outputFile.close()
>>
>> Kent
>> _______________________________________________
>> Tutor maillist  -  Tutor at python.org
>> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
>>
>
>


-- 
Serdar Tumgoren
The Record
150 River Street
Hackensack, NJ 07601
201-403-0834
tumgoren at northjersey.com
northjersey.com
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