Question

I am using the csv module for Python. I have had a good look at the CSV File Reading and Writing guide. I want to write a loop that runs through each row in the CSV file and assigns each row do a different variable. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

I am aware that there is a .next() and .line_num, I didn’t think that these would be suitable in this case although I might be wrong.

Currently I have the following code, which print out the whole CSV file:

print_csv = csv.reader(open(csv_name, 'rb'), delimiter=' ', quotechar='|')
for row in print_csv:
    print ', '.join(row)

[EDIT]

I am now aware, from this question thread, that the best way to do this will depend on what the first line is going to be used for.

What I want to do with the first line of the CSV file is to check whether it is in the correct format. This would involve:

• checking to see whether it has the expected number of columns

• checking to see whether the column headers have the correct name

• checking to see whether to columns are in the correct order.

Answer 1

1.- Fast Answer

Instead of setting different independent variables you could do:

mydict = {}
for idx, item in enumerate(reader):
    mydict['var%i' %idx] = item

then you call your var like:

mydict['var0']

Or still shorter in py3k:

mydict = {'var%i' %idx : item for idx, item in enumerate(reader)}

But this doesnt have much sense applied this way

As a commenter said this is not different than doing directly:

mylist = list(reader)

and then

mylist[0] # instead of 'var0'

and this option is much better.
The dictionary strategy is best suited when you extract the dictionary key from the very same reader line. For example, if it were at pos pos 0,:

mydict = {item[0] : item for item in reader}

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2.- The Proper Answer

But if what you want is simply to check the format of the first line (maybe to calculate the space you need for printing), the method could be:

line = reader.next()
like_this = check_how_is_my(line)
if like_this == 'something_long':
    spaces = 23
else:
    spaces = 0

while True:
    try:
        print_with_spaces(line, spaces)
        reader.next()
    except StopIteration:
        break