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pythonfilecsvfile-read

csv file read - every single character in one single list

I am rather new to python and could really need some help (I did not find anything that helped me by now).

I want to read a csv-file to a list, but unfortunately my output is not as expected. Instead of having a list like:

[[Weiz;61744],[Deutschlandsberg;5645]]

I have a list that looks like this:

[['W'],['e'],['i'], etc.]

My code looks like this:

def readCSV(file):
    for row in open(file,"r+"):
        ftpstream = urllib.request.urlopen(row)
        csvFile = csv.reader(ftpstream.read().decode('latin-1'))
        data = [row for row in csvFile]
        for row in data:
            print(row)

Can anybody please tell me why it is not working? I am really struggling right now...

Solution

  • The function csv.reader expects to receive a list of lines, not a single string (such as would be returned by ftpstream.read().decode('latin-1')). If you replace:

    csvFile = csv.reader(ftpstream.read().decode('latin-1'))

    with

    csvFile = csv.reader(ftpstream.read().decode('latin-1').split('\n'))

    I believe it will work as you expect.