parsing CSV files with quotes

[Warren Postma]

Okay, here's a hackish way to do it:


>>> x = "34, \"Stone Cold, Austin,Steve \", 50"
>>> print x
34, "Stone Cold, Austin,Steve ", 50
>>> y = eval("["+x+"]")
>>> print y
[34, 'Stone Cold, Austin,Steve ', 50]
>>> print str(y)[1:-1]
34, 'Stone Cold, Austin,Steve ', 50

Well, one thing, for the picky is that Python prefers single quotes, when
you do a str(), it uses that.

Another is that any code with eval() can do "way more than I intended" by
calling eval, since eval() is basically opening up the entire parser.

Is there some code to do eval_literals_only() that knows about parsing
literal expressions but which can't be made to call any functions?

ie:

l = eval_literals_only("["+x+"]") # create list, but would not allow
function calls

Weird to realize you're on the path to reinventing some tiny, yet
nontrivial, portion of Python's parser from within Python, eh?

Warren