python - Convert CSV column to list

Question

Say I have a CSV file. It contains:

a,b,c
1,2,3
4,5,6
7,8,9

How can I turn the column labeled 'a' into a list, without hard-coding a row to it?

Originally, I was doing a readline for the first line a,b,c and then hard-coding a row to each variable. But then I thought: what if I wanted to do it with the possibility of the CSV file not being arranged the same way - say:

b,a,c
2,1,3
5,4,6
8,7,9

What's the best way to go about this?

Answer 1

You can do this using the pandas library:

import pandas

data = pandas.read_csv("test.csv", header=0)
col_a = list(data.a)
col_b = list(data.b)
col_c = list(data.c)

The values in col_a, col_b and col_c are as follows:

[1, 4, 7]
[2, 5, 8]
[3, 6, 9]