TEXT MANIPULATION (in CSV format)

[Bill Scherer]

Robin Porter wrote:

> I am wondering how difficult it would be to use PYTHON to go through a
> CSV (Comma separated value) formatted file, take two of the fields and
> merge them into one field.
>
> An example would be:
>
> Field 1             Field 2
>
> "K"           ,       "1234"
>
> I want to change to:
>
> Field 1
>
> K1234
>

Easy:

-----------------------
#untested...
import string

split = string.split
strip = string.strip

filename = "/some/path/and/file.csv"

newFile = open(filename + '.new', 'w')

for line in open(filename).readlines():
    f1, f2 = map(strip, split(line, ",",  1))
    newFile.write("%s%s\n" % (f1, f2))

newFile.close()
-----------------------

This will work fine if your original file is not huge.
If your file is huge, you'll want do your readlines in chuncks so as not
to swamp memory.



> Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Your welcome.


--
William K. Scherer
Sr. Member of Applications Staff
Verizon Wireless