How to read data from a CSV file when the column heading contains a forward slash?

Question

I want to check whether a column in a CSV file is storing any data that is equal to a given input.

I have a csv file which I'll call myFile.csv , I'm using pandas to read it as follows:

import pandas as pd

...

path = r'C:\Users\...\myFile.csv'
df = pd.read_csv(path)

One of the columns I'm trying to read data from has the heading Country/Region . What I'm trying to do is check whether Country/Region contains any rows with the value 'someRegion'

region = 'someRegion'

for item in df.Country/Region:
    if item == region:
        #doSomething

The issue I'm having is that when I do this I get the following error:

AttributeError: 'DataFrame' object has no attribute 'Country'

Is there any way for this to work without changing the name of the column heading in the CSV file to something without a forward slash as this is not an option?

(I'm using the latest version of pandas and python 3.7.7 )

Answer 1

you can reference column in following way:

In [44]: for item in df['country/region']:
    ...:     if item == region:
    ...:         #do something
    ...:

Answer 2

Python won't interpret the following line of code in the way you want it to, hence the error:

for item in df.Country/Region:

The Python Interpreter thinks the '/' symbol is a division operator and not part of the column name.

If the name of the column contains a character that acts as an operator, like "/", you need to address your DataFrame using the [] bracket notation.

if "region" in df["Country/Region"]:
    pass