How do I replace double quotes inside double quotes with empty character in CSV fields?

Question

I have a CSV file with each fields quoted in double quotes. But some of the fields/strings itself has double quotes inside it and I want to remove them from that particular string.

For example- One of the string in CSV fields is "My name is "Rajesh" Kumar".

Now I want to replace the above string as "My name is Rajesh Kumar", restoring the double quotes outside.

I tried the below code, but unfortunately it replaces all the double quotes.

file_out = csv.writer(open("file", "w"), doublequote=False, escapechar='\\', delimiter=';',quotechar='"')
with open("file", "r") as f:
   content = f.read().replace('"', '')
   reader = csv.reader(StringIO(content), doublequote=False, escapechar='\\', delimiter=';'quotechar='"')
   for row in reader:
      print(row)
      file_out.writerow(row)

Answer 1

You could replace all quotes in a substring that does not include the first and last characters of your original string.

row = "\"My name is \"Rajesh\" Kumar\""
print(row)
row = row[0] + row[1:-1].replace('\"', '') + row[-1]
print(row)

or

row = "\"My name is \"Rajesh\" Kumar\""
print(row)
row = "\"{}\"".format(row[1:-1].replace('\"', ''))
print(row)

Output:

"My name is "Rajesh" Kumar"
"My name is Rajesh Kumar"

Found another post that basically covers what is being asked: Regular expression replace except first and last characters