Best way to access the Nth line of csv file

Question

I have to access the Nth line in a CSV file.

Here\'s what I did:

import csv

the_file = open(\'path\', \'r\')
reader = csv.reader(the_file)

N = inpu         


        

Answer 1

Your solution is actually not that bad. Advancing the file iterator to the line you want is a good approach and is used in many situations like this.

If you want it more concise though, you can use next and enumerate with a generator expression:

import csv

the_file = open('path', 'r')
reader = csv.reader(the_file)

N = int(input('What line do you need? > '))

line = next((x for i, x in enumerate(reader) if i == N), None)
print(line)

the_file.close()

The None in there is what will be returned if the line is not found (N is too large). You can pick any other value though.

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You could also open the file with a with-statement to have it be automatically closed:

import csv

with open('path', 'r') as the_file:
    reader = csv.reader(the_file)

    N = int(input('What line do you need? > '))

    line = next((x for i, x in enumerate(reader) if i == N), None)
    print(line)

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If you really want to cut down on size, you could do:

from csv import reader
N = int(input('What line do you need? > '))
with open('path') as f:
    print(next((x for i, x in enumerate(reader(f)) if i == N), None))