On Dec 12, 6:14 am, "massimo s." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list