12.20.2 Dialects and Formatting Parameters

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12.20.2 Dialects and Formatting Parameters

To make it easier to specify the format of input and output records, specific formatting parameters are grouped together into dialects. A dialect is a subclass of the `Dialect` class having a set of specific methods and a single `validate()` method. When creating `reader` or `writer` objects, the programmer can specify a string or a subclass of the `Dialect` class as the dialect parameter. In addition to, or instead of, the dialect parameter, the programmer can also specify individual formatting parameters, which have the same names as the attributes defined below for the `Dialect` class.

Dialects support the following attributes:

`delimiter`
  A one-character string used to separate fields. It defaults to `','`.

`doublequote`
  Controls how instances of quotechar appearing inside a field should be themselves be quoted. When `True`, the character is doubled. When `False`, the escapechar must be a one-character string which is used as a prefix to the quotechar. It defaults to `True`.

`escapechar`
  A one-character string used to escape the delimiter if quoting is set to `QUOTE_NONE`. It defaults to `None`.

`lineterminator`
  The string used to terminate lines in the CSV file. It defaults to `'\r\n'`.

`quotechar`
  A one-character string used to quote elements containing the delimiter or which start with the quotechar. It defaults to `'"'`.

`quoting`
  Controls when quotes should be generated by the writer. It can take on any of the `QUOTE_*` constants (see section 12.20.1) and defaults to `QUOTE_MINIMAL`.

`skipinitialspace`
  When `True`, whitespace immediately following the delimiter is ignored. The default is `False`.