How to use multiple delimiters when using csv.reader in python?

Question

I have multiple lines of texts in a text file that look similar to this:

2012-03-16 13:47:30.465 -0400   START  Running    Lab.script    19    on_the

I want to be able to convert this text file into csv. I've already done that using this code:

fin = csv.reader(open('LogFile.txt', 'rb'), delimiter='\t')
fout = open('newLogFile.csv', 'w')
for row in fin:
   fout.write(','.join(row) + '\n')

But now, my issue is that I need to be able to add a "," after the spaces in this part of the line:

2012-03-16 13:47:30.465 -0400 

I'm not sure how to do it, I've tried using split(), to split the current row/position but it didn't work. Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Thank you

Answer 1

Would helpful to instead just tab delimit everything from the beginning? If so you can refer to this answer, essentially

There is a special-case shortcut for exactly this use case!

If you call str.split without an argument, it splits on runs of whitespace instead of single characters. So:

>>> ' '.join("Please \n don't \t hurt \x0b me.".split()) 
"Please don't hurt me."

so for you it would be

newLogFile = open('newLogFile.csv', 'w')
textFile = open('LogFile.txt', 'rb')
for row in textFile:
    newLogFile.write('\t'.join(row.split()))

Also you said

But now, my issue is that I need to be able to add a "," after the spaces in this part of the line:

2012-03-16 13:47:30.465 -0400

to me that sounds like you want

2012-03-16 ,13:47:30.465 ,-0400