How to Eliminate Unexpected Carriage Returns in Python CSV Files on Windows?

Dealing with Unexpected Carriage Returns in CSV Files in Python on Windows

A peculiar issue can arise when generating a CSV file in Python: an extra carriage return (r) appears at the end of each row on Windows systems. This differs from the expected behavior, where each row is terminated with a single carriage return (r) or newline (n) character, depending on the operating system.

Why This Happens

On Windows, Python's default behavior for handling CSV files is to interpret the line separator as universal newline (n), which is different from the standard Unix line separator (rn). As a result, the CSV writer appends a double carriage return (rr) when writing to a file, causing an additional blank line to appear.

Fixing the Issue

To resolve this issue, you can disable the universal newline translation by specifying newline='' when opening the file.

Python 3:

with open('output.csv', 'w', newline='', encoding='utf-8') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)

Python 2:

For Python 2, it is recommended to open the file in binary mode ('rb' or 'wb') before passing it to the CSV writer. This is because CSV is considered a binary format with line separators stored as raw bytes.

with open('output.csv', 'wb') as f:
    writer = csv.writer(f)

By following these recommendations, you can prevent the extra carriage returns from being added to the CSV file, ensuring that it adheres to the desired line separation conventions.

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