Python file opening with quote inside newline parameter

Question

I have a tsv file with content like:

'"1"\t"2"\t"3"\t"4"\n'
'"5"\t"6\n7"\t"8"\t"9"\n'

I want to be able to ignore \\n symbols inside double quotes, but file's readline() method read it like:

1 2 3 4
5 6
7 8 9

What I want is:

1 2 3 4
5 6\n7 8 9

I tried to pass it to the newline parameter:

f = open('file.tsv', newline = '"\n')
f = open('file.tsv', newline = '\"\n')

But I get

ValueError: illegal newline value: "

Answer 1

Readline method doesn't parce tsv-like strings, just reads the content as it is. Python provides CSV package to read such files:

import csv
with open('test.csv') as csvfile:
    reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter='\t', quotechar='"')
    for row in reader:
        print(', '.join(row))

Read more abuot this package in the docs .

BTW, your trick with newline argument throws an error because it can be None , '' , '\\n' , '\\r' , and '\\r\\n' .

Note that newline only applies to text mode.

UPDATE :

See the example with topicstarter's data below:

from io import StringIO

file = StringIO("""'"1"\t"2"\t"3"\t"4"'
'"5"\t"6\n7"\t"8"\t"9"'""")
reader =csv.reader(file, delimiter='\t', quotechar='"')
for row in reader:
    print(row)

Output:

['\'"1"', '2', '3', "4'"]
['\'"5"', '6\n7', '8', "9'"]

So it works as expected - splitting cannot be performed right when you open the file, csv.reader working with file object, not with the lines.