Pandas read_csv dtype leading zeros

Question

So I\'m reading in a station codes csv file from NOAA which looks like this:

\"USAF\",\"WBAN\",\"STATION NAME\",\"CTRY\",\"FIPS\",\"STATE\",\"CALL\",\"LAT\",         


        

Answer 1

With Pandas 1, how about:

df.read_csv(..., dtype={"my_confusing_col": "string"})

Note that will use the column dtype string which uses pd.NA for any missing values. All leading zeros will of course be preserved.