Specify Delimiter when Reading pandas DataFrame from CSV File in Python (Example)

In this article you’ll learn how to change the separator when importing a pandas DataFrame from a CSV file in Python.

The tutorial will contain these content blocks:

Here’s how to do it…

Example Data & Software Libraries

First, we need to import the pandas library:

import pandas as pd                              # Import pandas library in Python

As a next step, let’s also create some example data in Python:

data = pd.DataFrame({'x1':range(1, 8),           # Create pandas DataFrame
                     'x2':['x', 'y', 'y', 'z', 'z', 'y', 'z'],
                     'x3':range(18, 11, - 1),
                     'x4':['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g']})

We can now write this pandas DataFrame to a CSV file using the to_csv function:

data.to_csv('data.csv',                          # Export pandas DataFrame to CSV
            index = False,
            sep = ';')

If we would now load this CSV file into Python with the default separator specifications of the read_csv function, the output would look as shown below:

data_import_default = pd.read_csv('data.csv')    # Import CSV file
print(data_import_default)                       # Print imported CSV file
#   x1;x2;x3;x4
# 0    1;x;18;a
# 1    2;y;17;b
# 2    3;y;16;c
# 3    4;z;15;d
# 4    5;z;14;e
# 5    6;y;13;f
# 6    7;z;12;g

As you can see, our imported pandas DataFrame is not shown properly. Let’s fix this!

Example: Specify Separator when Importing a pandas DataFrame from a CSV File

This example shows how to set an appropriate delimiter when reading a CSV file as pandas DataFrame to Python.

For this task, we can use the sep argument as shown below. In this specific case, we are using a semicolon instead of a comma as separator:

data_import_sep = pd.read_csv('data.csv',        # Import CSV file
                              sep = ';')
print(data_import_sep)                           # Print imported CSV file

Table 1 shows the structure of our example data: It contains seven rows and four variables. As you can see, it has been imported properly.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

Some time ago, I have published a video on my YouTube channel, which demonstrates the topics of this article. You can find the video below:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

Furthermore, you may read some of the related Python articles on this homepage:

• pandas Library Tutorial in Python
• Specify dtype when Reading pandas DataFrame from CSV File
• Read Multiple CSV Files & Append into One pandas DataFrame
• Read CSV File Line by Line in Python
• Ignore Header when Reading CSV File as pandas DataFrame
• Read CSV File as pandas DataFrame in Python
• DataFrame Manipulation Using pandas in Python
• Drop First & Last N Columns from pandas DataFrame in Python
• Get Values of First Row in pandas DataFrame in Python
• Insert Column at Specific Position of pandas DataFrame in Python
• Introduction to Python Programming

To summarize: In this tutorial you have learned how to use a different delimiter when importing a pandas DataFrame from a CSV file in Python. Please tell me about it in the comments, in case you have further questions.