I have a csv file with information about some computers on our network. I'd like to be able to type from the command line a quick line to bring me back the relevant items from the csv. In the format:

$ tag.py *hostname*

The csv has about 50 columns with information ranging from MAC address to last time seen on the network. I only want to output a selection of these columns when I search. I've written the necessary code and it works. However I want the search to be more flexible. As it stands, the search term needs to be exactly the same as the value I'm searching for. aka

$ tag.py mycomputer        # This returns nothing
$ tag.py mycomputer.co.uk  # This returns the information I want
$ tag.py 63746             # This returns nothing
$ tag.py 00063746          # This returns the information I want

So now for the code I have.

# Import Modulesimport sys
import csv# Get user Input
# I assume the script is used in the form script.py "search-term"
# If no input added to command, ask for user inputif len(sys.argv) < 2:print("Please enter a hostname or asset number.")search_1 = input("Search for:")
else:search_1=sys.argv[1]# Setup Variables
# Open cvs and setup csv.reader settingscsvfile = open("file.csv", "r", encoding="Latin-1")
csvfile.seek 
reader = csv.reader(csvfile, dialect='excel', delimiter=",", quotechar="'")# Search cvs for the input stringfor line in reader:if search_1 in line:print("------------------------------------------------------")print("  Hostname = " + line[10])print("  " + line[11])print("  AssetId = " + line[30])print("  IP = " + line[7])print("  MAC = " + line[6])print("  Owner = " + line[15])print("  Username = " +line[14])print("  Tel = " + line[17])print("  Last Seen = " + line[27])print("------------------------------------------------------")csvfile.close()

I would like the code to be able to ignore the fqdn if I search for a hostname or to add the extra 0 characters to the asset number. I think I can fix the asset number issue with a len(search_1) < 8 append some 0 to the front until it is 8 characters long but that's avoiding the fact that I really would prefer to just search for the string without manipulating it to match the thing I'm looking for.

Instead of testing if your input string is in the line, test if your input string is in any of the columns. The any() function is ideally suited for that:

if any(search_1 in col for col in line):

To break this down a little: each line in your csv.reader() iterable is itself a list of columns, you can loop over these. for col in line does just that. We test if search_1 is present in each column with search_1 in col, and any() will execute the loop until it finds a column where search_1 in col is True, in which case it stops iterating over the loop and returns True itself. If no match was found False is returned instead.