Fill in empty CSV fields from previous record (like Excel's "Fill Down" command).
I was working with a report from JSS that my superiors wanted sorted differently. But, the report had some blanks setup for easier viewing of the data, like this:
| First Field | Second Field |
|---|---|
| Rob | Item 1 |
| [blank] | Item 2 |
| John | Item 1 |
| [blank] | Item 2 |
I could open it with Excel and "fill down" for each blank section; but, I had 14k rows. And, I have no interest in learning VBScript to create an Excel macro.
So, this is a good learning opportunity for me with Python.
This script examines each row, checking the requested fields (currently 1 and 2 since that is what I initially needed) for blanks. If it finds a blank, it changes it to that field's entry from the previous non-blank record.
As I'm learning Python, I want to:
- add GUI dialogs to select the original file and name the results file
- add a field selector to select which fields you want to "fill"
- add some logic to recommend which fields to "fill"