If all you want to do is add a tab to the beginning of each line, then you don't need to bother using the csv library.  Just open your file, read it line by line, prepend a tab to each line and write it out again.

src = open('noid_refworks.txt','rU')
tgt = open('withid.txt', 'w')

for line in src.readlines():
    line = '\t%s' % line
    tgt.write(line)

-Joshua

________________________________________
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Bohyun Kim <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 9:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Tab delimited file with Python CSV

Hi all,

I am new to Python and was wondering if I can get some help with my short script. What I would like the script to do is:
(1) Read the tab delimited file generated by Refworks
(2) Output exactly the same file but the blank column added in front.
(This is for prepping the exported tab delimited file from refworks so that it can be imported into MySQL; so any suggestions in the line of timtoady would be also appreciated.)

This is what I have so far. It works, but then in the output file, I end up getting some weird character in each line in the second column (first column in the original input file). I also don't really get what escapechar=' ' does or what I am supposed to put in there.

import csv
with open('noid_refworks.txt','rU') as csvinput:
    with open('withid.txt', 'w') as csvoutput:
        dialect = csv.Sniffer().sniff(csvinput.read(1024))
        csvinput.seek(0)
        reader = csv.reader(csvinput, dialect)
        writer = csv.writer(csvoutput, dialect, escapechar='\'', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
        for row in reader:
            writer.writerow(['\t']+row)

A row in the original file is like this (Tab delimited and no quotations, some fields have commas and quotation marks inside.):

Reference Type    Authors, Primary    Title Primary    Periodical Full    Periodical Abbrev    Pub Year    Pub Date Free From    Volume    Issue    Start Page    Other Pages    Keywords    Abstract    Notes    Personal Notes    Authors, Secondary    Title Secondary    Edition    Publisher    Place Of Publication    Authors, Tertiary    Authors, Quaternary    Authors, Quinary    Title, Tertiary    ISSN/ISBN    Availability    Author/Address    Accession Number    Language    Classification    Sub file/Database    Original Foreign Title    Links    DOI    Call Number    Database    Data Source    Identifying Phrase    Retrieved Date    Shortened Title    User 1    User 2    User 3    User 4    User 5    User 6    User 7    User 8    User 9    User 10    User 11    User 12    User 13    User 14    User 15

A row in the output file is like this:
(The tab is successfully inserted. But I don't get why I have L inserted after no matter what I put in escapechar)

    LReference Type    Authors, Primary    Title Primary    Periodical Full    Periodical Abbrev    Pub Year    Pub Date Free From    Volume    Issue    Start Page    Other Pages    Keywords    Abstract    Notes    Personal Notes    Authors, Secondary    Title Secondary    Edition    Publisher    Place Of Publication    Authors, Tertiary    Authors, Quaternary    Authors, Quinary    Title, Tertiary    ISSN/ISBN    Availability    Author/Address    Accession Number    Language    Classification    Sub file/Database    Original Foreign Title    Links    DOI    Call Number    Database    Data Source    Identifying Phrase    Retrieved Date    Shortened Title    User 1    User 2    User 3    User 4    User 5    User 6    User 7    User 8    User 9    User 10    User 11    User 12    User 13    User 14    User 15


Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated!
~Bohyun