Find number of columns in csv file

Question

My program needs to read csv files which may have 1,2 or 3 columns, and it needs to modify its behaviour accordingly. Is there a simple way to check the number of columns withou

Answer 1

You can use itertools.tee

itertools.tee(iterable[, n=2])
Return n independent iterators from a single iterable.

eg.

reader1, reader2 = itertools.tee(csv.reader(f, delimiter=d))
columns = len(next(reader1))
del reader1
for row in reader2:
    ...

Note that it's important to delete the reference to reader1 when you are finished with it - otherwise tee will have to store all the rows in memory in case you ever call next(reader1) again