diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Doc')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/library/csv.rst | 34 |
1 files changed, 23 insertions, 11 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/csv.rst b/Doc/library/csv.rst index cb03f8d..899ce02 100644 --- a/Doc/library/csv.rst +++ b/Doc/library/csv.rst @@ -94,8 +94,8 @@ The :mod:`csv` module defines the following functions: :class:`Dialect` class or one of the strings returned by the :func:`list_dialects` function. The other optional *fmtparams* keyword arguments can be given to override individual formatting parameters in the current - dialect. For full details about the dialect and formatting parameters, see - section :ref:`csv-fmt-params`. To make it + dialect. For full details about dialects and formatting parameters, see + the :ref:`csv-fmt-params` section. To make it as easy as possible to interface with modules which implement the DB API, the value :const:`None` is written as the empty string. While this isn't a reversible transformation, it makes it easier to dump SQL NULL data values to @@ -117,7 +117,7 @@ The :mod:`csv` module defines the following functions: Associate *dialect* with *name*. *name* must be a string. The dialect can be specified either by passing a sub-class of :class:`Dialect`, or by *fmtparams* keyword arguments, or both, with keyword arguments overriding - parameters of the dialect. For full details about the dialect and formatting + parameters of the dialect. For full details about dialects and formatting parameters, see section :ref:`csv-fmt-params`. @@ -225,9 +225,21 @@ The :mod:`csv` module defines the following classes: .. class:: Dialect - The :class:`Dialect` class is a container class relied on primarily for its - attributes, which are used to define the parameters for a specific - :class:`reader` or :class:`writer` instance. + The :class:`Dialect` class is a container class whose attributes contain + information for how to handle doublequotes, whitespace, delimiters, etc. + Due to the lack of a strict CSV specification, different applications + produce subtly different CSV data. :class:`Dialect` instances define how + :class:`reader` and :class:`writer` instances behave. + + All available :class:`Dialect` names are returned by :func:`list_dialects`, + and they can be registered with specific :class:`reader` and :class:`writer` + classes through their initializer (``__init__``) functions like this:: + + import csv + + with open('students.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile: + writer = csv.writer(csvfile, dialect='unix') + ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ .. class:: excel() @@ -419,8 +431,8 @@ Reader objects (:class:`DictReader` instances and objects returned by the Return the next row of the reader's iterable object as a list (if the object was returned from :func:`reader`) or a dict (if it is a :class:`DictReader` - instance), parsed according to the current dialect. Usually you should call - this as ``next(reader)``. + instance), parsed according to the current :class:`Dialect`. Usually you + should call this as ``next(reader)``. Reader objects have the following public attributes: @@ -460,9 +472,9 @@ read CSV files (assuming they support complex numbers at all). .. method:: csvwriter.writerow(row) - Write the *row* parameter to the writer's file object, formatted according to - the current dialect. Return the return value of the call to the *write* method - of the underlying file object. + Write the *row* parameter to the writer's file object, formatted according + to the current :class:`Dialect`. Return the return value of the call to the + *write* method of the underlying file object. .. versionchanged:: 3.5 Added support of arbitrary iterables. |