dataframe error reading csv

Question

I'm trying to open a dataframe, inserting into pandas for some analysis.

raw = pd.read_csv('/home/chris/Desktop/Cambridge/SOURCE_DATA/Node_56_Nairobi_OutputFile.xls', encoding='utf16', error_bad_lines=False)

I tried suggestions on other threads. Then this is happening:

Skipping line 3: expected 1 fields, saw 20
Skipping line 21: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 22: expected 1 fields, saw 6
Skipping line 23: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 27: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 28: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 30: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 34: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 35: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 36: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 37: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 38: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 39: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 40: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 111: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 113: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 116: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 117: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 161: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 162: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 182: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 184: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 202: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 204: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 218: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 222: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 223: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 232: expected 1 fields, saw 5
Skipping line 233: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 234: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 235: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 237: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 259: expected 1 fields, saw 4
Skipping line 265: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 275: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 290: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 294: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 301: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 303: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 307: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 323: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 326: expected 1 fields, saw 3
Skipping line 332: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 334: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 340: expected 1 fields, saw 4
Skipping line 345: expected 1 fields, saw 4
Skipping line 349: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 351: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 361: expected 1 fields, saw 2
Skipping line 370: expected 1 fields, saw 2

and it goes on and on. Why? More than that it still eventually throws up this error

CParserError                              
Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-21-ab444ae5f5e9> in <module>()
----> 1 raw = pd.read_csv('/home/chris/Desktop/Cambridge/SOURCE_DATA/Node_56_Nairobi_OutputFile.xls', encoding='utf16', error_bad_lines=False)

/home/chris/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in parser_f(filepath_or_buffer, sep, delimiter, header, names, index_col, usecols, squeeze, prefix, mangle_dupe_cols, dtype, engine, converters, true_values, false_values, skipinitialspace, skiprows, skipfooter, nrows, na_values, keep_default_na, na_filter, verbose, skip_blank_lines, parse_dates, infer_datetime_format, keep_date_col, date_parser, dayfirst, iterator, chunksize, compression, thousands, decimal, lineterminator, quotechar, quoting, escapechar, comment, encoding, dialect, tupleize_cols, error_bad_lines, warn_bad_lines, skip_footer, doublequote, delim_whitespace, as_recarray, compact_ints, use_unsigned, low_memory, buffer_lines, memory_map, float_precision)
    527                     skip_blank_lines=skip_blank_lines)
    528 
--> 529         return _read(filepath_or_buffer, kwds)
    530 
    531     parser_f.__name__ = name

/home/chris/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in _read(filepath_or_buffer, kwds)
    303         return parser
    304 
--> 305     return parser.read()
    306 
    307 _parser_defaults = {

/home/chris/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in read(self, nrows)
    761                 raise ValueError('skip_footer not supported for iteration')
    762 
--> 763         ret = self._engine.read(nrows)
    764 
    765         if self.options.get('as_recarray'):

/home/chris/anaconda2/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers.pyc in read(self, nrows)
   1211     def read(self, nrows=None):
   1212         try:
-> 1213             data = self._reader.read(nrows)
   1214         except StopIteration:
   1215             if self._first_chunk:

pandas/parser.pyx in pandas.parser.TextReader.read (pandas/parser.c:7988)()

pandas/parser.pyx in pandas.parser.TextReader._read_low_memory (pandas/parser.c:8244)()

pandas/parser.pyx in pandas.parser.TextReader._read_rows (pandas/parser.c:8970)()

pandas/parser.pyx in pandas.parser.TextReader._tokenize_rows (pandas/parser.c:8838)()

pandas/parser.pyx in pandas.parser.raise_parser_error (pandas/parser.c:22649)()

CParserError: Error tokenizing data. C error: Buffer overflow caught - possible malformed input file.

I really don't get why though.

Answer 1

Wait, this solved it. In a moment of sheer monumental stupidity and coding frustration, I got .csv files and .xls files mixed up...

raw = pd.read_excel('/home/chris/Desktop/Cambridge/SOURCE_DATA/Node_56_Nairobi_OutputFile.xls')

facepalm