Reading CSV file in Python results in a list of individual characters

Question

I'm trying to parse CSV file in Python and so far it's returning a list of individual characters, but apparently I can't concatenate the list of characters into a string. When I try to do so, my logger doesn't log anything at all. Here is the code:

def action_import(self):
    f = self.import_file.decode('base64')
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    new_reader = []
    for row in reader:
        new_reader += row
    _logger.debug("NEW READER")
    _logger.debug(new_reader) #returns a list of individual characters
    string = "I'm a string"
    for char in new_reader:
        _logger.debug("HERE IS A CHAR")
        _logger.debug(char) #returns an individual char with no quotation marks
        string += str(char)
    _logger.debug("THE STRING")
    _logger.debug(string) #returns nothing

The output from _logger.debug(new_reader) with the list of individual characters looks like this: ['\\xef', '\\xbb', '\\xbf', 'P', 'r', 'o', 'd', 'u', 'c', 't', '', '', 'Q', 't', 'y', '', '', 'P', 'r', 'i', 'c', 'e', '', '', 'P', 'r', 'i', 'c', 'e', ' ', 'P', 'e', 'r', ' ', 'U', 'n', 'i', 't', '', '', 'P', 'u', 'b', 'l', 'i', 'c', ' ', 'P', 'r', 'i', 'c', 'e', 'A', 'T', 'O', 'R', 'V', 'A', 'S', 'T', 'A', 'T', 'I', 'N', ' ', '2', '0', ' ', 'M', 'G', ' ', 'T', 'A', 'B', 'L', 'E', 'T', '', '', '3', '0', '', '', '1', '0', '', '', '0', '.', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '', '', '0', '.', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3', '3']

I've also tried doing ''.join(new_reader) but the same thing happens where the logger doesn't even log the result of it.

What am I doing wrong? Thank you!

Answer 1

• str.decode() it treated self.import_file as a string in your case.

• csv.reader() is taking csvfile as parameter, csvfile is an object that supports iterator protocol and returns a string each time its next() method is called.

You accidently pass a string as the csvfile to csv.reader() , for example:

   >>> f = csv.reader("abc")
    >>> for row in f:
    ...     print row
    ...
    ['a']
    ['b']
    ['c']