Using csv module to read ascii delimited text?

Question

You may or may not be aware of ASCII delimited text, which has the nice advantage of using non-keyboard characters for separating fields and lines.

Writing this out

Answer 1

You can do it by effectively translating the end-of-line characters in the file into the newline characters csv.reader is hardcoded to recognize:

import csv

with open('ascii_delim.adt', 'w') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f, delimiter=chr(31), lineterminator=chr(30))
    writer.writerow(('Sir Lancelot of Camelot', 'To seek the Holy Grail', 'blue'))
    writer.writerow(('Sir Galahad of Camelot', 'I seek the Grail', 'blue... no yellow!'))

def readlines(f, newline='\n'):
    while True:
        line = []
        while True:
            ch = f.read(1)
            if ch == '':  # end of file?
                return
            elif ch == newline:  # end of line?
                line.append('\n')
                break
            line.append(ch)
        yield ''.join(line)

with open('ascii_delim.adt', 'rb') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(readlines(f, newline=chr(30)), delimiter=chr(31))
    for row in reader:
        print row

Output:

['Sir Lancelot of Camelot', 'To seek the Holy Grail', 'blue']
['Sir Galahad of Camelot', 'I seek the Grail', 'blue... no yellow!']