How to Read and Parse CSV Files in Python

Here is a way to read CSV files in Python pandas. The packages you need to import are numpy and pandas. On the flip side, for Text files, you don't need to import these special libraries since python by default support it.

Python pandas read_csv

>>> import numpy as np
>>> import pandas as pd

To see how pandas handle this kind of data, we'll create a small CSV file in the working directory as ch05_01.csv.

white, red, blue, green, animal
1,5,2,3,cat 

2,7,8,5,dog 

3,3,6,7,horse 

2,2,8,3,duck 

4,4,2,1,mouse

Since this file is comma-delimited, you can use the read_csv() function to read its content and convert it to a dataframe object.

>>> csvframe = pd.read_csv('ch05_01.csv')
>>> csvframe
   white  red  blue  green animal
0      1    5     2      3    cat
1      2    7     8      5    dog
2      3    3     6      7  horse
3      2    2     8      3   duck
4      4    4     2      1  mouse

Python reading text files

Since python supports text files, you don't need to import NumPy and Pandas. The syntax is a little different. 

Using the Open method, here file is opened with read mode. In the place file name, it has given; the full path of the file. The Print method displays contents. Here read method is used to read the file.

# Open our file in read mode 

f = open("data/flatland01.txt", mode="r") 

# Read and display the text file 

print(f.read())
# Close our file resource 

f.close()

Finally, working with CSV and Text files knowing is helpful for interviews.

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