How to escape comma in string Python 2.7 in a .csv file

Question

I have a string ven = "the big bad, string" in a .csv file. I need to escape the , character using Python 2.7.

Currently I am doing this: ven = "the big bad\, string", but when I run the following command print ven, it prints the big bad\, string in the terminal.

How do I effectively escape the , character from this string within a .csv file so if someone were to dl that file and open it in excel it wouldn't screw everything up?

Answer 1

Assuming that you're using the csv module, you don't have to do anything. csv deals with it for you:

import csv

w = csv.writer(open("result.csv","w"))
w.writerow([1,"a","the big bad, string"])

result:

1,a,"the big bad, string"

If, however, you aren't using import csv, then you'll want to quote that field:

row = [1, "a", "the big bad, string"]
print ','.join('"%s"'%i for i in row)

Result:

"1","a","the big bad, string"