New submission from Daniel Andersson:
Regarding the `skipinitialspace` parameter to the different CSV reader dialects
in the `csv` module, the official documentation asserts:
When True, whitespace immediately following the delimiter is ignored.
and the `help(csv)` style module documentation says:
* skipinitialspace - specifies how to interpret whitespace which
immediately follows a delimiter. It defaults to False, which
means that whitespace immediately following a delimiter is part
of the following field.
"Whitespace" is a bit too general in both cases (at least a red herring in the
second case), since it only skips spaces and not e.g. tabs [1].
In `Modules/_csv.c`, it more correctly describes the parameter. At line 81:
int skipinitialspace; /* ignore spaces following delimiter? */
and the actual implementation at line 638:
else if (c == ' ' && dialect->skipinitialspace)
/* ignore space at start of field */
;
No-one will probably assume that the whole UTF-8 spectrum of "whitespace" is
skipped, but at least I initially assumed that the tab character was included.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character
----------
assignee: docs@python
components: Documentation, Library (Lib)
messages: 216780
nosy: Daniel.Andersson, docs@python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: skipinitialspace in the csv module only skips spaces, not "whitespace"
in general
type: behavior
versions: Python 2.7, Python 3.1, Python 3.2, Python 3.3, Python 3.4, Python 3.5
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<http://bugs.python.org/issue21297>
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