Split into two columns and convert txt text into a csv file

Question

I have the following data:

Graudo. A selection of Pouteria caimito, a minor member...

TtuNextrecod. A selection of Pouteria caimito, a minor member of the Sapotaceae...

I want to split it into two columns

Column1       Column2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graudo        A selection of Pouteria caimito, a minor member...
TtuNextrecod  A selection of Pouteria caimito, a minor member of the Sapotaceae...

Need help with the code. Thanks,

import csv # convert
import itertools #function for a efficient looping

with open('Abiutxt.txt', 'r') as in_file:
    lines = in_file.read().splitlines() #returns a list with all the lines in string, including the line breaks

    test = [line.split('. ')for line in lines ] #split period....but...need work

    print(test)


    stripped = [line.replace('', '').split('. ')for line in lines ]

    grouped = itertools.izip(*[stripped]*1)
    with open('logtestAbiutxt.csv', 'w') as out_file:
        writer = csv.writer(out_file)
        writer.writerow(('Column1', 'Column2'))

        for group in grouped:
            writer.writerows(group)

Answer 1

I am not sure you need zipping here at all. Simply iterate over every line of the input file, skip empty lines, split by the period and write to the csv file:

import csv


with open('Abiutxt.txt', 'r') as in_file:
    with open('logtestAbiutxt.csv', 'w') as out_file:
        writer = csv.writer(out_file, delimiter="\t")
        writer.writerow(['Column1', 'Column2'])

        for line in in_file:
            if not line.strip():
                continue

            writer.writerow(line.strip().split(". ", 1))

Notes:

• Note: specified a tab as a delimiter, but you could change it appropriately
• thanks to @PatrickHaugh for the idea to split by the first occurence of ". " only as your second column may contain periods as well.

Answer 2

This should get you what you want. This will handle all the escaping.

import csv
with open('Abiutxt.txt', 'r') as in_file:
    x = in_file.read().splitlines()
    x = [line.split('. ', 1) for line in x if line]
with open('logtestAbiutxt.csv', "w") as output:
    writer = csv.writer(output, lineterminator='\n')
    writer.writerow(['Column1', 'Column2']) 
    writer.writerows(x)