How Can I Disable Quoting In The Python 2.4 CSV Reader?

I am writing a Python utility that needs to parse a large, regularly-updated CSV file I don't control. The utility must run on a server with only Python 2.4 available. The CSV fi

Solution 1:

I don't know if python would like/allow it but could you use a non-printable ascii code such as BEL or BS (backspace) These I would think to be extremely rare.

Solution 2:

I tried a few examples using Python 2.4.3, and it seemed to be smart enough to detect that the fields were unquoted.

I know you've already accepted a (slightly hacky) answer, but have you tried just leaving the reader.dialect.quotechar value alone? What happens if you do?

Any chance we could get example input?

Solution 3:

+1 for Triptych

Confirmation that csv.reader automatically handles csv files with out quotes:

>>> import StringIO
>>> import csv
>>> data="""
... 1,2,3,4,5
... 1,2,3,4,5
... 1,2,3,4,5
... """
>>> reader=csv.reader(StringIO.StringIO(data))
>>> for i in reader:
...     print i
... 
[]
['1', '2', '3', '4', '5']
['1', '2', '3', '4', '5']
['1', '2', '3', '4', '5']