Read CSV into a dataFrame with varying row lengths using Pandas

Question

So I have a CSV that looks a bit like this:

1 | 01-01-2019 | 724
2 | 01-01-2019 | 233 | 436
3 | 01-01-2019 | 345
4 | 01-01-2019 | 803 | 933 | 943 | 923 | 954         


        

Answer 1

Read fixed width should work:

from io import StringIO

s = '''1  01-01-2019  724
2  01-01-2019  233  436
3  01-01-2019  345
4  01-01-2019  803  933  943  923  954
5  01-01-2019  454'''


pd.read_fwf(StringIO(s), header=None)

   0           1    2      3      4      5      6
0  1  01-01-2019  724    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN
1  2  01-01-2019  233  436.0    NaN    NaN    NaN
2  3  01-01-2019  345    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN
3  4  01-01-2019  803  933.0  943.0  923.0  954.0
4  5  01-01-2019  454    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN

or with a delimiter param

s = '''1 | 01-01-2019 | 724
2 | 01-01-2019 | 233 | 436
3 | 01-01-2019 | 345
4 | 01-01-2019 | 803 | 933 | 943 | 923 | 954
5 | 01-01-2019 | 454'''


pd.read_fwf(StringIO(s), header=None, delimiter='|')

   0             1    2      3      4      5      6
0  1   01-01-2019   724    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN
1  2   01-01-2019   233  436.0    NaN    NaN    NaN
2  3   01-01-2019   345    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN
3  4   01-01-2019   803  933.0  943.0  923.0  954.0
4  5   01-01-2019   454    NaN    NaN    NaN    NaN

note that for your actual file you will not use StringIO you would just replace that with your file path: pd.read_fwf('data.csv', delimiter='|', header=None)