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Is anyone happy with csv module?

John Machin sjmachin at lexicon.net
Tue Dec 11 16:37:10 EST 2007 
On Dec 12, 6:14 am, "massimo s." <deviceran... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm struggling to use the python in-built csv module, and I must say
> I'm less than satisfied. Apart from being rather poorly documented,

Patches are welcome :-)

> I
> find it especially cumbersome to use,

Can you be more specific? What are you trying to do with it?

> and also rather limited.

What extra facilities do you think there should be?

> What I
> dislike more is that it seems working by *rows* instead than by
> *columns*.

Perhaps you'd better explain what you mean by "working by". Here's my
take on it:

A CSV file is organised such that each line of the file represents a
row, and the nth field in the line relates to the nth column, so it's
natural for any CSV reader/writer to work by rows. *Additional*
functionality e.g. to suck the file into a list of lists that could be
accessed easily by column index is possible, but it is well within the
competence of average Python programmers to write that themselves:

    data = [row for row in csv.reader(......)]
    ...
    whatever = data[row_index][col_index]

Accessing the data by columns *instead* of by rows would definitely
not be appreciated by people who are using the csv module to read
millions of lines of data.

>
> So I have some questions:
> 1) Is there a good tutorial, example collection etc. on the csv module
> that I'm missing?

AFAIK, no.

> 2) Is there an alternative csv read/write module?

Is your googler broken?

> 3) In case anyone else is as unhappy as me, and no tutorial etc.
> enlighten us, and no alternative is present, anyone is interested in
> an alternative csv module?

-1

> I'd like to write one if it is the case.

In what language?

Cheers,
John
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