Writing List of Strings to Excel CSV File in Python

Question

I'm trying to create a csv file that contains the contents of a list of strings in Python, using the script below. However when I check my output file, it turns out that every character is delimited by a comma. How can I instruct csv.writer to delimit every individual string within the list rather than every character?

import csv  RESULTS = ['apple','cherry','orange','pineapple','strawberry']  result_file = open("output.csv",'wb') wr = csv.writer(result_file, dialect='excel') for item in RESULTS:     wr.writerow(item) 

I checked PEP 305 and couldn't find anything specific.

Answer 1

The csv.writer writerow method takes an iterable as an argument. Your result set has to be a list (rows) of lists (columns).

csvwriter.writerow(row) 

Write the row parameter to the writer’s file object, formatted according to the current dialect.

Do either:

import csv RESULTS = [     ['apple','cherry','orange','pineapple','strawberry'] ] with open('output.csv','w') as result_file:     wr = csv.writer(result_file, dialect='excel')     wr.writerows(RESULTS) 

or:

import csv RESULT = ['apple','cherry','orange','pineapple','strawberry'] with open('output.csv','w') as result_file:     wr = csv.writer(result_file, dialect='excel')     wr.writerow(RESULT) 

Answer 2

Very simple to fix, you just need to turn the parameter to writerow into a list.

for item in RESULTS:     wr.writerow([item])