Question

I have a csv file that looks like this:

TEST  
2012-05-01 00:00:00.203 ON 1  
2012-05-01 00:00:11.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-01 00:00:22.203 ON 1  
2012-05-01 00:00:33.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-01 00:00:44.203 OFF 0  
TEST  
2012-05-02 00:00:00.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-02 00:00:11.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-02 00:00:22.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-02 00:00:33.203 OFF 0  
2012-05-02 00:00:44.203 ON 1  
2012-05-02 00:00:55.203 OFF 0  

and cannot get rid of the "TEST" string.

Is it possible to check whether a line starts with a date and read only those that do?

Answer 1

from cStringIO import StringIO
import pandas

s = StringIO()
with open('file.csv') as f:
    for line in f:
        if not line.startswith('TEST'):
            s.write(line)
s.seek(0) # "rewind" to the beginning of the StringIO object

pandas.read_csv(s) # with further parameters…