Dealing with double "double quotations" in CSV

Question

I am processing some data stored in a CSV file with python. There was a line like this:

title, tags, views, like
"Hello, world!" in python, ['beginner', 'tutorial'], '550', '540'

As you can see, there are many commas in the data which can break the CSV file. So, I enclosed all the elements with double quotations. But, there are already double quotations in the title. So, if I use a double quotation again, it just breaks the CSV file. Which look like this:

"Hello | World!" in python | ['beginner', 'tutorial'] | 550 | 540

(Added " | " to make things clear)

And I want it to look like this:

"Hello, world!" in python | ['beginner', 'tutorial'] | 550 | 540

How can I fix this?

You'll likely have to parse this manually. Why does your file look like this in the first place? How was it created? — user2357112, Apr 21 '20 at 01:38
Does this answer your question? [How do I read and write CSV files with Python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41585078/how-do-i-read-and-write-csv-files-with-python) — SuperStormer, Apr 21 '20 at 01:45
`csv.reader` does not work on this file. It removes the quotes from `"Hello, world!"` and splits the `['beginner', 'tutorial']` list, for example. — user2357112, Apr 21 '20 at 01:50
Your working with an invalid CSV file. Can you change how it was created in the first place? For example, use `csv.writer` to create it correctly. — Mark Tolonen, Apr 21 '20 at 02:08

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '20 at 01:41

Well, if you can't apply a delimiter to the commas that are not field separators...

Can you export the data with a field separating delimiter that is not in the data?

Alternately can you first convert all the commas that occur in the data to some odd character.. then export the data as a CSV file.

After importing the data into the database... or your application... run things through a function to convert the chosen odd character back to commas.

Dealing with double "double quotations" in CSV

1 Answers1