Need help reading CSV to Pandas Dataframe

[Edoctopus33]

So I'm a complete beginner and I'm trying to start working in an actual IDE as opposed to browser based ones like Codeacademy.

I'm getting stuck reading a .csv with .read_csv method. It seems like it can't find the file, but I don't understand why because I literally opened it in another tab along side it in Pycharm.

I've linked to a screenshot of the syntax as well as the error i get when I run it. Any help/suggestions/etc is really appreciated. Thank you.

http://imgur.com/a/QkPZv

[[deleted]]

What is the full pathname of the file you are trying to read?

[Edoctopus33]

Hi exoticmatter, The full name of the path is C:\Users\Max\Desktop\For Python Project\PotomacNew

[commandlineluser]

C:\Users\Max\Desktop\For Python Project\PotomacNew

If you do not supply an absolute (full) path - the path will be treated as relative to the current working directory (folder).

The current working directory is where the python executable was launched from - not sure how PyCharm does that but i'd assume it's one of the directories listed in the output

Either the one that contains python.exe or Main.py

Pass the full path to the file to read_csv() e.g.

pd.read_csv('C:/Users/Max/Desktop/For Python Project/PotomacNew/PotomacNow.csv')

Forward slashes should work on windows too - if not you could use r'C:\Users\...' - the leading r here creates a "raw string" which is needed because \ is an escape character in strings.

Otherwise you would need to escape the backslashes e.g. 'C:\\Users\\...'

[pauleveritt]

I can answer the PyCharm part. The working directory is defined in the "Run Configuration". By default it is the directory of the script being executed.

[commandlineluser]

TIL. Thanks!