Reading a two-column file into an array?

[Jay Loden]

Nagarajan wrote:
> On Jul 31, 9:03 am, Gilles Ganault <nos... at nospam.com> wrote:
>> Hello
>>
>> I'm sure there's a much easier way to read a two-column, CSV file into
>> an array, but I haven't found it in Google.
>>
>> Should I use the Array module instead?

[...snip]

> a = []
> import csv
> reader = csv.reader(open("filename", "r"), delimiter='\t' )
> for row in reader:
>     a.append( row )
> 
> ----------------------------
> I don't think you can have multidimensional arrays.
> Did you test you program? It did not work for me.
> I think mine would suit your requirements as the output is a list of
> lists.

I am similarly confused as to the nature of the original request, but for completeness' sake, I went by the same assumption of building a list of lists, and came up with this (which does not use the csv module). Nagarajan's code is more concise and just as readable IMO, but here's my take anyway:

a = []
b = []
handle = open(filename, 'r')

for line in handle.xreadlines():
    col1,col2 = line.split('\t')
    a.append(col1)
    b.append(col2)

columns = [a, b]

-Jay