for row in reader: Error: line contains NUL

Question

This is what my program looks like right now:

def getdata(file_name):
    with open(file_name, errors='ignore') as f:
        rowdata = []
        reader = csv.reader(f)
        for row in reader:
            rowdata.append(row)
    return rowdata

I keep getting this error

for row in reader:

Error: line contains NUL

Check if your csv file has any empty lines: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7894856/line-contains-null-byte-in-csv-reader-python — rdas, Mar 16 '21 at 04:11
this error might even be caused if the encoding is different like `UTF-16` or something else — theProcrastinator, Mar 16 '21 at 06:34
@rdas the problem is a NUL (`b'\x00'`) byte in the CSV, not an empty line. — tripleee, Mar 16 '21 at 06:34

score -1 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 16 '21 at 06:35

-1

I am guessing you have a NULL value in the file. You can test that with

if '\0' in open('filename').read():
  print("you have null value in your file")
else:
  print("you don't")

if you do, replace null values with space.

reader = csv.reader(x.replace('\0', '') for x in filename)

then you can hopefully read file without error

edited Mar 16 '21 at 06:35

theProcrastinator

840
9
22

answered Mar 16 '21 at 04:40

Talha Ramzan

120
5

1

This is a feasible workaround if you know what you are doing, but blindly replacing invalid data with different invalid data just to remove the symptom is a horrible approach. – tripleee Mar 16 '21 at 06:48

for row in reader: Error: line contains NUL

1 Answers1