vsoler wrote:
On Aug 28, 5:43 pm, Steven Rumbalski <googleacco...@rumbalski.com>
wrote:
On Aug 27, 3:06 pm, vsoler <vicente.so...@gmail.com> wrote:



I am trying to read a csv file generated by excel.
Although I succeed in reading the file, the format that I get is not
suitable for me.
I've done:
import csv
spamReader = csv.reader(open('C:\\abc.csv', 'r'))
print spamReader
<_csv.reader object at 0x01022E70>
for row in spamReader:
        print row
['codigo;nombre;cantidad']
['a;qwe;1']
['b;asd;2']
['c;zxc;3']
My questions are:
1- Why using "print spamReader" I cannot see the data?
    I expected to see a list of lists, a kind of a matrix, but I get
nothing
2- Why are the rows in a single string?
   I expected a list of fields that, when text, would be delimited by
"
  To tell the truth, the file generated by excel does not contain the
strings delimited by ". Isn't it weird?
3- Is there anything I can do to have my data in a list of lists
structure? would another kind of data suit better my needs?
Thank you for your help
Vicente Soler
the csv module can handle any delimiter.

change this >>> spamReader = csv.reader(open('C:\\abc.csv', 'r'))
to this >>> spamReader = csv.reader(open('C:\\abc.csv', 'r'),
delimiter=';')

hope this helps,
Steven Rumbalski

Thank you very much for all your comments. After reading them I can
conclude that:

1- the CSV format is not standardized; each piece of software uses it
differently

2- the "C" in "CSV" does not mean "comma" for Microsoft Excel; the ";"
comes from my regional Spanish settings

3- Excel does not even put quotes around litteral texts, not even when
the text contains a blank

But, perhaps, there is no standard alternative to CSV !!!
This depends on the use case of yourself or your users. If you could give more detail on what you are trying to achieve then I'm sure that more help will be forthcoming. For example, could the file be saved in Excel 97-2003 xls format and then processed with the excellent xlrd/xlwt/xlutils? They are available here:-
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlutils/1.4.0

--
Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.

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