How do I write data into CSV format as string (not file)?

Question

I want to cast data like [1,2,\'a\',\'He said \"what do you mean?\"\'] to a CSV-formatted string.

Normally one would use csv.writer() for

Answer 1

Here's the version that works for utf-8. csvline2string for just one line, without linebreaks at the end, csv2string for many lines, with linebreaks:

import csv, io

def csvline2string(one_line_of_data):
    si = BytesIO.StringIO()
    cw = csv.writer(si)
    cw.writerow(one_line_of_data)
    return si.getvalue().strip('\r\n')

def csv2string(data):
    si = BytesIO.StringIO()
    cw = csv.writer(si)
    for one_line_of_data in data:
        cw.writerow(one_line_of_data)
    return si.getvalue()