read CSV file in Python
Python has useful module named csv to deal with csv files. But recently I faced a problem reading csv files and want to share with you how I get rid of the problem. I wanted to get the data of the first column of my csv file. I tried the following code: import csv portfolio = csv.reader(open("portfolio.csv", "rb")) names = [] for data in portfolio: names.append(data[0]) print names but the output was an empty list ([]) :-( Then I found the type of portfolio object using print type(portfolio) that the type is '_csv.reader', then I changed my program to the following and got the list :-) import csv portfolio = csv.reader(open("portfolio.csv", "rb")) portfolio_list = [] portfolio_list.extend(portfolio) names = [] for data in portfolio_list: names.append(data[0]) print names If you have any better idea, please share. To know more about csv module, http://docs.python.org/lib/module-csv.html