python opens text file with a space between every character

Question

Whenever I try to open a .csv file with the python command fread = open(\'input.csv\', \'r\') it always opens the file with spaces between every single character.

Answer 1

To read an encoded file, you can simply replace open with codecs.open.

fread = codecs.open('input.csv', 'r', 'utf-16')

Answer 2

The file is encoded in some unicode encoding, but you are reading it as ascii. Try to convert the file to ascii before using it in python.

Answer 3

Ok, I got it with the help of Jarret Hardie's post

this is the code that I used to convert the file to ascii

fread = open('input.csv', 'rb').read()
mytext = fread.decode('utf-16')
mytext = mytext.encode('ascii', 'ignore')
fwrite = open('input-ascii.csv', 'wb')
fwrite.write(mytext)

Thanks!

Answer 4

Isn't csv a simple txt file with values separated with comma. Just try to open it with a text editor to see if the file is correctly formed.

Answer 5

Open the file in binary mode, 'rb'. Check it in a HEX Editor and check for null padding '00'. Open the file in something like Scintilla Text Editor to check the characters present in the file.

Answer 6

It did never ocurred to me, but as truppo said, it must be something wrong with the file.

Try to open the file in Excel/BrOffice Calc and Save As the file as Csv again.

If the problem persists, try a subset of the data: fist 10/last 10/intermediate 10 lines of the file.