'python how to trim trailing spaces in csv DictReader keys

I am using python (2.6) csv DictReader. My input file has a header line where the column names have trailing spaces:

colname1,      colname2     ,col3, etc.
XX, YY, ZZ

The returned dict object has key() = ['colname1', 'colname2 ', 'col3']

Is there an option to trim leading and trailing spaces from the keys?

--edit

The problem arises in processing by key names:

with open(fname) as f:
   r = csv.DictReader(f)
   for row in r:
      print "processing", r["column1"], r["column2"]

The files are database dumps. And the dump program is way too smart - it adjust the output column width depending on data -- which means different sets of selects are going to have different column width and different key lengths. Sometimes I must use r['column2 '] and sometimes pad or reduce spaces. ouch!

python

Solution 1:^[1]

You need to register a custom dialect in the csv module

csv.register_dialect('MyDialect', quotechar='"', skipinitialspace=True, quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE, lineterminator='\n', strict=True)

then use the dialect when creating the DictReader:

my_reader = csv.DictReader(trip_file, dialect='MyDialect')

Here's all the Dialect Options

Solution 2:^[2]

Python3 version

with open('file.csv') as fh:
    header = [h.strip() for h in fh.readline().split(',')]
    reader = csv.DictReader(fh, fieldnames=header)

Solution 3:^[3]

Following in the vein of other answers, but why not use the CSV reader for that header row?

header = [h.strip() for h in next(csv.reader(f))]
reader = csv.DictReader(f, fieldnames=header)

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	klucar
Solution 2	Luis
Solution 3	Kevin

'python how to trim trailing spaces in csv DictReader keys

Solution 1:[1]

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Sources

Related Questions

Solution 1:^[1]

Solution 2:^[2]

Solution 3:^[3]