How to read a file with a semi colon separator in pandas

I a importing a .csv file in python with pandas.

Here is the file format from the .csv :

a1;b1;c1;d1;e1;...
a2;b2;c2;d2;e2;...   
.....

here is how get it :

from pandas import *
csv_path = "C:...."
data = read_csv(csv_path)

Now when I print the file I get that :

0  a1;b1;c1;d1;e1;...
1  a2;b2;c2;d2;e2;...

And so on… So I need help to read the file and split the values in columns, with the semi color character ;.

Answers:

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Method 1

read_csv takes a sep param, in your case just pass sep=';' like so:

data = read_csv(csv_path, sep=';')

The reason it failed in your case is that the default value is ',' so it scrunched up all the columns as a single column entry.

Method 2

In response to Morris’ question above:
“Is there a way to programatically tell if a CSV is separated by , or ; ?”

This will tell you:

import pandas as pd

df_comma = pd.read_csv(your_csv_file_path, nrows=1,sep=",")
df_semi = pd.read_csv(your_csv_file_path, nrows=1, sep=";")
if df_comma.shape[1]>df_semi.shape[1]:
    print("comma delimited")
else:
    print("semicolon delimited")

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