Remove special characters from csv file using python

Question

There seems to something on this topic already (How to replace all those Special Characters with white spaces in python?), but I can\'t figure this simple task out for the l

Answer 1

This doesn't seem to need to deal with CSV's in particular (as long as the special characters aren't your column delimiters).

lines = []
with open('C:/Temp/Data.csv', 'r') as input:
    lines = input.readlines()

conversion = '-"/.$'
newtext = '_'
outputLines = []
for line in lines:
    temp = line[:]
    for c in conversion:
        temp = temp.replace(c, newtext)
    outputLines.append(temp)

with open('C:/Temp/Data_out1.csv', 'w') as output:
    for line in outputLines:
        output.write(line + "\n")