Im trying to read just a single cell, in order to bring in the date to use elsewhere. Using pandas I get an error If I try to do this, generally just that the dataframe cant be read because it expects a workable dataframe and not a single cell value prior to the actual convertable dataframe far below the initial line. How can I just get the cell i.e. [A2]
Yes, pandas is not very good at files with inconsistent format (like varying number of columns). For that purpose, I recommend you should use csv the standard library.
The code below should give you the desired value.
import csv
row = 2; col = 1 # A2 = (2,1) cell
with open("yourfile.csv") as f:
reader = csv.reader(f)
for i in range(row):
row = next(reader)
value = row[col-1] # because python index starts at zero
print(value)
Demo (using string instead of a file):
import csv
row = 2; col = 1 # A2 = (2,1) cell
input_str = ["a,b", "c,d,e", "f,g,h,i"]
reader = csv.reader(input_str)
for i in range(row):
row = next(reader)
value = row[col-1] # because python index starts at zero
print(value)