Using double quotes within str Python pandas

Question

I am creating the following dataframe and then writing it to a txt file:

df = pd.DataFrame({'key': ['0001'], 'name': ['"LUCA"']})
df.to_csv('names.txt', index=False)

I expect my txt file to look like this:

key,name
0001,"LUCA"

But it is looking like this instead:

key,name
0001,"""LUCA"""

Any suggestion please?

Answer 1

You can change the quotechar in to_csv to avoid interpreting " as the quoting character:

df = pd.DataFrame({'key': ['0001'], 'name': ['"LUCA"']})

df.to_csv('names.txt', index=False, quotechar="'")

output file:

key,name
0001,"LUCA"

This means, however, that if you really need escaping, you will have single quotes:

df = pd.DataFrame({'key': ['0001', '0002'], 'name': ['"LUCA"', 'LUCA,']})

df.to_csv('names.txt', index=False, quotechar="'")

output:

key,name
0001,"LUCA"
0002,'LUCA,'