So I have this file. So my understanding is that DictReader reads the csv file creating a dictionary for each line. The I create the first and last name by calling on name"key" and first, last and house goes again into a dictionary that is appended to the students list. Please let me know if any of the steps I am describing are wrong or why I am getting the error below. Thank you!

import csv

students =[]
with open("before.csv") as file:
    reader = csv.DictReader(file)
    for row in reader:
        first,last = row["name"].strip().split(',')
        house = row["house"]
        students.append({"first":first, "last":last, "house":row["house"]})
    print (students)

$ python before.csv 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/workspaces/115945517/before.csv", line 1, in <module>
    name,house
    ^^^^
NameError: name 'name' is not defined

>Solution :

When you say

python before.csv

you’re telling python to execute the csv file as a python script. A csv file is just a way of storing data, "comma separated values".

You need to run

python your_script.py

where your_script is the name of the python file (.py) that you’re working on.