Writing a Python list of lists to a csv file

Question

I have a long list of lists of the following form ---

a = [[1.2,'abc',3],[1.2,'werew',4],........,[1.4,'qew',2]]

i.e. the values in the list are of different types -- float,int, strings.How do I write it into a csv file so that my output csv file looks like

1.2,abc,3
1.2,werew,4
.
.
.
1.4,qew,2

Answer 1

Python's built-in CSV module can handle this easily:

import csv

with open("output.csv", "wb") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerows(a)

This assumes your list is defined as a, as it is in your question. You can tweak the exact format of the output CSV via the various optional parameters to csv.writer() as documented in the library reference page linked above.

Answer 2

Ambers's solution also works well for numpy arrays:

from pylab import *
import csv

array_=arange(0,10,1)
list_=[array_,array_*2,array_*3]
with open("output.csv", "wb") as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)
    writer.writerows(list_)

Answer 3

import csv
with open(file_path, 'a') as outcsv:   
    #configure writer to write standard csv file
    writer = csv.writer(outcsv, delimiter=',', quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL, lineterminator='\n')
    writer.writerow(['number', 'text', 'number'])
    for item in list:
        #Write item to outcsv
        writer.writerow([item[0], item[1], item[2]])

official docs: http://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html

Answer 4

Make sure to indicate lineterinator='\n' when create the writer; otherwise, an extra empty line might be written into file after each data line when data sources are from other csv file...

Here is my solution:

with open('csvfile', 'a') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter='    ',quotechar='|', quoting=csv.QUOTE_MINIMAL, lineterminator='\n')
for i in range(0, len(data)):
    spamwriter.writerow(data[i])

Answer 5

You could use pandas:

In [1]: import pandas as pd

In [2]: a = [[1.2,'abc',3],[1.2,'werew',4],[1.4,'qew',2]]

In [3]: my_df = pd.DataFrame(a)

In [4]: my_df.to_csv('my_csv.csv', index=False, header=False)

Answer 6

Using csv.writer in my very large list took quite a time. I decided to use pandas, it was faster and more easy to control and understand:

 import pandas

 yourlist = [[...],...,[...]]
 pd = pandas.DataFrame(yourlist)
 pd.to_csv("mylist.csv")

The good part you can change somethings to make a better csv file:

 yourlist = [[...],...,[...]]
 columns = ["abcd","bcde","cdef"] #a csv with 3 columns
 index = [i[0] for i in yourlist] #first element of every list in yourlist
 not_index_list = [i[1:] for i in yourlist]
 pd = pandas.DataFrame(not_index_list, columns = columns, index = index)

 #Now you have a csv with columns and index:
 pd.to_csv("mylist.csv")