# The first 4 functions demonstrate how to read in a csv formatted
# file using standard reading of a file.  It requires splitting
# each line of the list of lines so that in the end, the implied
# table of information from the file is loaded into a list of lists
# data structure. Each high level list entry represents a row from
# the csv file, and furthermore, each row is represented by a list
# of items.

# A file like this:
# head1, head2, head3
# cat, dog, fish
# one, two, three
#
# becomes:
# [["head1","head2","head3"],["cat","dog", "fish"], ["one","two","three"]]

def readData(filename):
    f = open(filename, "r")
    data = f.readlines()
    f.close()
    return data

def removeBlankLines(data):
    # removes blank lines and \n
    goodLines = []
    for line in data:
        line = line.rstrip()
        if len(line) != 0:
            goodLines.append(line)
    return goodLines

def splitLines(data):
    newLines = []
    for line in data:
        myList = line.split(", ") # not a great way to avoid spaces
        newLines.append(myList)
    return newLines
    
def driver():
    rawDataList = readData("asotv.csv")
    cleanDataList = removeBlankLines(rawDataList)
    csvDataList = splitLines(cleanDataList)
    print(csvDataList)

##############
# Now a somewhat equivalent solution using the csv module of Python 3.

def readCSVExample(filename="asotv.csv"):
    import csv

    # You'll need to create lines as an empty list if you are
    # going to build it yourself
    
    # lines = []

    f = open(filename)

    # below specifying delimiter & quotechar is the same as
    # the default dialect="excel"
    csvReader = csv.reader(f, delimiter=",", quotechar='"')

    # code the adding of rows to the lines list yourself as below
    
    #for row in csvReader:
    #    lines.append(row)
    
    # or simply use the list function to form a list
    # from the iterable reader object

    lines = list(csvReader)
    
    f.close()
    
    return lines