Dealing with \r in CSV fields in Python2.4

[Tim Chase]

I've got some old 2.4 code (requires an external lib that hasn't been
upgraded) that needs to process a CSV file where some of the values
contain \r characters.  It appears that in more recent versions (just
tested in 2.7; docs suggest this was changed in 2.5), Python does the
Right Thing™ and just creates values in the row containing that \r.
However, in 2.4, the csv module chokes on it with

  _csv.Error: newline inside string

as demoed by the example code at the bottom of this email.  What's the
best way to deal with this?  At the moment, I'm just using something
like

  def unCR(f):
    for line in f:
      yield line.replace('\r', '')

  f = file('input.csv', 'rb')
  for row in csv.reader(unCR(f)):
    code_to_process(row)

but this throws away data that I'd really prefer to keep if possible.

I know 2.4 isn't exactly popular, and in an ideal world, I'd just
upgrade to a later 2.x version that does what I need.  Any old-time
2.4 pythonistas have sage advice for me?

-tkc


from cStringIO import StringIO
import csv
f = file('out.txt', 'wb')
w = csv.writer(f)
w.writerow(["One", "Two"])
w.writerow(["First\rSecond", "Third"])
f.close()

f = file('out.txt', 'rb')
r = csv.reader(f)
for i, row in enumerate(r): # works in 2.7, fails in 2.4
    print repr(row)
f.close()