Python - re-ordering columns in a csv

You can use the csv module to read, reorder, and then and write your file.

Sample File:

$ cat file.csv
A,B,C,D,E
a1,b1,c1,d1,e1
a2,b2,c2,d2,e2

Code

import csv

with open('file.csv', 'r') as infile, open('reordered.csv', 'a') as outfile:
    # output dict needs a list for new column ordering
    fieldnames = ['A', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'B']
    writer = csv.DictWriter(outfile, fieldnames=fieldnames)
    # reorder the header first
    writer.writeheader()
    for row in csv.DictReader(infile):
        # writes the reordered rows to the new file
        writer.writerow(row)

output

$ cat reordered.csv
A,C,D,E,B
a1,c1,d1,e1,b1
a2,c2,d2,e2,b2

So one way to tackle this problem is to use pandas library which can be easily install using pip. Basically, you can download csv file to pandas dataframe then re-order the column and save it back to csv file. For example, if your sample.csv looks like below:

A,C,B,E,D                                                                                                                
a1,b1,c1,d1,e1                                                                                                           
a2,b2,c2,d2,e2 

Here is a snippet to solve the problem.

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('/path/to/sample.csv')
df_reorder = df[['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E']] # rearrange column here
df_reorder.to_csv('/path/to/sample_reorder.csv', index=False)

csv_in  = open("<filename>.csv", "r")
csv_out = open("<filename>.csv", "w")

for line in csv_in:
    field_list = line.split(',')    # split the line at commas
    output_line = ','.join(field_list[0],   # rejoin with commas, new order
                           field_list[2],
                           field_list[3],
                           field_list[4],
                           field_list[1]
                           )
    csv_out.write(output_line)

csv_in.close()
csv_out.close()