Python 2 CSV writer produces wrong line terminator on Windows

by

In Python 2.x, always open your file in binary mode, as documented. csv writes \r\n as you expected, but then the underlying Windows text file mechanism cuts in and changes that \n to \r\n … total effect: \r\r\n

From the csv.writer documentation:

If csvfile is a file object, it must be opened with the 'b' flag on platforms where that makes a difference.

There seems to be some reticence about actually uttering the name of the main culprit 🙂

Edit: As mentioned by @jebob in the comments to this answer and based on @Dave Burton’s answer, to handle this case in both Python 2 and 3, you should do the following:

if sys.version_info >= (3,0,0):
    f = open(filename, 'w', newline="")
else:
    f = open(filename, 'wb')

More Related Contents:

  1. CSV file written with Python has blank lines between each row
  2. CSV in Python adding an extra carriage return, on Windows
  3. How to run multiple Python versions on Windows
  4. General Unicode/UTF-8 support for csv files in Python 2.6
  5. portable way to write csv file in python 2 or python 3
  6. Handling \r\n vs \n newlines in python on Mac vs Windows
  7. UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0x96 in position 35: invalid start byte
  8. Read Unicode characters from command-line arguments in Python 2.x on Windows
  9. How to read a CSV file from a URL with Python?
  10. How can I stop Python’s csv.DictWriter.writerows from adding empty lines between rows in Windows?
  11. Python long filename support broken in Windows
  12. Python3: writing csv files
  13. “python” not recognized as a command
  14. How to use XPath in Python?
  15. Getting MAC Address
  16. Which is the easiest way to simulate keyboard and mouse on Python?
  17. Python Window Activation
  18. Python command not working in command prompt
  19. Using Python, how can I access a shared folder on windows network?
  20. Python exception chaining [duplicate]
  21. How to do row-to-column transposition of data in csv table?
  22. Tkinter: Mouse drag a window without borders, eg. overridedirect(1)
  23. Writing a csv file into SQL Server database using python
  24. overriding bool() for custom class [duplicate]
  25. Python raw strings and trailing backslash [duplicate]
  26. How do comparison operators < and > work with a function as an operand?
  27. IndexError: too many indices for array
  28. How do I read text from the Windows clipboard in Python?
  29. How to upload a CSV file in FastAPI and convert it into a Pandas Dataframe?
  30. Detecting computer/program shutdown in Python?

Leave a Comment