csv.reader problem tab-delimiter - newbie

[hidding]

Hi all,

I use python 2.5 and want to read in a simple 5-columned, tab-
delimited ascii file "dummy.txt" such as as

1  23.04 5.6
4  677 8.2  19

I do

import csv
asciireader = csv.reader(open('dummy.txt'), delimiter='\t')

array1 = []
for entry in asciireader:
 array1.append( entry )

however when I then

print array1

then the array does only have two elements [1  23.04 5.6]
and [4  677 8.2  19]. The tab-delimiter seems to have been
totally ignored! This is bad because I want to do some maths with the
numbers from the file later (after converting them into floats).

Can someone help?

Best regards,

Bernhard

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Re: csv.reader problem tab-delimiter - newbie

[hidding]

>
> Most likely the file is not tab delimited. If you used an editor to
> produce dummy.txt, check whether it uses soft tabs and disable it
> temporarily.
>
> HTH,
> George

> Most likely the file is not tab delimited. If you used an editor to
> produce dummy.txt, check whether it uses soft tabs and disable it
> temporarily.
>
> HTH,
> George

grrr thanks George, thanks Daniel, that's it. Works fine with real
tabs. Now this brings me to a follow-up: I have not prepared the input
ascii file, I just got if for post-processing (23 MB). Now it seems
that I would have to replace all series of spaces in this file with
real tabs at first.. How would you do that? Are there text editors
capable of doing this?

Best regards,

Bernhard
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