Read one single line from csv file in Python

There are a lot of tutorial about how to use CSV data in Python. But sometimes we want to read just a single line of data from a csv file. This can be done by using pandas or the built-in csv module.

read one line using csv module
The easiest way to read one single line of data from a csv file is to use the built-in csv module.


# open the 'myfile.csv' file
with open('myfile.csv', newline='') as mf:
  # read the csv file
  reader = csv.reader(mf)
  # read the first line
  one_line = next(reader)


read one line using pandas
To use pandas, we first need to import the pandas module using a import statement like shown below. Then we can read the first row by specifying the nrows parameter of the read_csv() method.


# import pandas module and specify suffix pd
import pandas as pd
# read 1 row of the specified csv file 'myfile.csv'
one_line = pd.read_csv("myfile.csv", nrows=1)


We can continue reading the next line of data by repeating the statement for the first line.