Read specific columns with pandas or other python module

Question

I have a csv file from this webpage. I want to read some of the columns in the downloaded file (the csv version can be downloaded in the upper right corner).

Let\'s

Answer 1

An easy way to do this is using the pandas library like this.

import pandas as pd
fields = ['star_name', 'ra']

df = pd.read_csv('data.csv', skipinitialspace=True, usecols=fields)
# See the keys
print df.keys()
# See content in 'star_name'
print df.star_name

The problem here was the skipinitialspace which remove the spaces in the header. So ' star_name' becomes 'star_name'