CSV module and Mac excel format problem

David Pratt fairwinds at eastlink.ca
Thu Oct 13 22:57:11 EDT 2005


Hi. I have had good success with CSV module but recently came across 
problem with reading excel from Mac Office.  The trouble is with line 
endings.  Instead of \r\n you have just \r and the file as a whole 
appears as a single line. CSV coughs and provides this exception:

_csv.Error: newline inside string

Saving as Windows (text) in Mac Office solves this but I don't 
necessarily want to force users to save this way just to avoid 
modifying my code. There is a lineterminator in the package.  Adding 
parameter lineterminator='\r' did not correct the problem.

The way I am reading tab delimited to dictionary:

	lines = sample.readlines()
	headers = csv.reader(lines, delimiter='\t').next()
	rows = csv.DictReader(lines, headers, delimiter='\t')
	for row in rows:
		print row

Regards,
David



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