Find and replace blanks in CSV with python

AngelaPaltridge

Hi,
I have a csv with some blanks that I want to convert to a value of N so I can import into a database.  Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong in my code?

Thanks.

import fileinput
for line in fileinput.FileInput(OPS_frq,inplace=1):
    line = line.replace(" ","N")
    print line


The csv looks like this:
GEOKEY,INDIG,CAVE,CORR,EYPT,PSP,LIC,HERIT,WELLS,TS,TT
1,,,,,,,,,,
2,,,,
3,,,,Y
4
5

JasonScheirer

This won't work, you're going to need to use the  CSV module to look deeper into your data. Yo could do something like this:

import csv

in_file = "hello.csv"
out_file = "hello_fixed.csv"

row_reader = csv.reader(open(in_file, "rb"))
row_writer = csv.writer(open(out_file, "wb"))

first_row = row_reader.next()
row_writer.writerow(first_row)
for row in row_reader:
    new_row = [val if val else "N" for val in row] + (["N"] * (len(first_row) - len(row)))
    print row, "->", new_row
    row_writer.writerow(new_row)

Even though this is plain text, it's pretty tricky to get right without the help of a library.