Keeping and representing data from a CSV file
Comma Separated Value (CSV) is a format to represent a table of values in plain text. It's often used to interact with data from spreadsheets. The specifications for CSV are described in RFC 4180, available at http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4180.
In this recipe, we will read a local CSV file called input.csv consisting of various names and their corresponding ages. Then, to do something useful with the data, we will find the oldest person.
Getting ready
Prepare a simple CSV file with a list of names and their corresponding ages. This can be done using a text editor or by exporting from a spreadsheet, as shown in the following figure:
The raw input.csv file contains the following text:
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