12.20.2 Dialects and Formatting Parameters
To make it easier to specify the format of input and output records,
specific formatting parameters are grouped together into dialects. A
dialect is a subclass of the Dialect class having a set of specific
methods and a single validate() method. When creating reader
or writer objects, the programmer can specify a string or a subclass
of the Dialect class as the dialect parameter. In addition to, or
instead of, the dialect parameter, the programmer can also specify
individual formatting parameters, which have the same names as the
attributes defined below for the Dialect class.
Dialects support the following attributes:
- delimiter
-
A one-character string used to separate fields. It defaults to
','.
- doublequote
-
Controls how instances of quotechar appearing inside a field should be
themselves be quoted. When True, the character is doubled.
When False, the escapechar must be a one-character string
which is used as a prefix to the quotechar. It defaults to
True.
- escapechar
-
A one-character string used to escape the delimiter if quoting
is set to QUOTE_NONE. It defaults to None.
- lineterminator
-
The string used to terminate lines in the CSV file. It defaults to
'\r\n'.
- quotechar
-
A one-character string used to quote elements containing the delimiter
or which start with the quotechar. It defaults to
'"'.
- quoting
-
Controls when quotes should be generated by the writer. It can take on any
of the QUOTE_* constants (see section 12.20.1)
and defaults to QUOTE_MINIMAL.
- skipinitialspace
-
When True, whitespace immediately following the delimiter
is ignored. The default is False.
Release 2.4, documentation updated on 30 November 2004.
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