Python: Extracting first element from each line of a CSV file

Question

I would like to read from a csv file and add certain things to a list

JFK,John F Kennedy International,5326,5486
ORY,Paris-Orly,629,379
MAD,Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas,1428,1151
AMS,Amsterdam Schiphol,526,489
CAI,Cairo International,3779,3584

Everything in the text file is listed above, I'd like to get the first from every line, so JFK ORY MAD AMS CAI added to a list.

I tried:

with open('Airports.txt', 'r') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    amr_csv = list(reader)

But this adds the whole text file to the list, and I couldn't get my head around adding it to only the first line

In summary, i'd like help on adding the first line of this text file to a list which is saved as a variable.

Does this answer your question? [How to read one single line of csv data in Python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17262256/how-to-read-one-single-line-of-csv-data-in-python) — Jab, Sep 30 '20 at 20:53
You say 'first line' twice, but you example is the first entry in each line. Those are different. Which do you mean? — David Collins, Oct 01 '20 at 03:23
I should've been more clear with my question, I'd like to retrieve the first entry in each line of the file. — Proxy, Oct 01 '20 at 21:50

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 30 '20 at 20:50

I'm pretty sure this will solve your problem

import csv
with open('Airports.txt', 'r') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    amr_csv = list(reader)
    for line in amr_csv:
        print(line[0])

Or

import csv
with open('Airports.txt','r') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    amr_csv = [line[0] for line in reader]
    print(amr_csv)

S3DEV · Answer 2 · 2020-10-01T09:50:20.917

Let's go with something very simple.

This snippet extracts the IATA codes from your CSV file into a list:

with open('airports.txt') as f:
    iata = [i.split(',')[0] for i in f.readlines()]

Code explanation:

Essentially this code is reading each line of the CSV and splitting by comma; then extracting the first element ([0]) and adding to a list, using list comprehension.

Output:

['JFK', 'ORY', 'MAD', 'AMS', 'CAI']

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 19 '20 at 19:07

import csv

with open('Airports.txt', 'r') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    example_list = list(reader)

print(example_list)

OUTPUT:

[['JFK', 'John F Kennedy International', '5326', '5486'], ['ORY', 'Paris-Orly', '629', '379'], ['MAD', 'Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas', '1428', '1151'], ['AMS', 'Amsterdam Schiphol', '526', '489'], ['CAI', 'Cairo International', '3779', '3584'], []]

Thank you for anyone who offered help, this is what I ended up settling on as it was what i was looking for, hope this helps anyone with any similar question.

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 30 '20 at 23:18

-1

See if this works

import csv

with open('Airports.txt', 'r') as file:
    reader = csv.reader(file)
    amr_csv = list(reader)
    for i in range(len(amr_csv)):
        print(amr_csv[i][0])

You can acces any data in your 2d array by accessing the amr[line][column].

edited Sep 30 '20 at 23:18

prosoitos

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answered Sep 30 '20 at 21:06

Romano Ferreira

1
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Python: Extracting first element from each line of a CSV file

4 Answers4

Code explanation:

Output: