title: How to define column headers when reading a csv file in Python
body: <p>I have a comma separated value table that I want to read in Python.  What I need to do is first tell Python not to skip the first row because that contains the headers.  Then I need to tell it to read in the data as a list and not a string because I need to build an array out of the data and the first column is non-integer (row headers).</p>
  
  <p>There are a total of 11 columns and 5 rows.<br>
  Here is the format of the table (except there are no row spaces):</p>
  
  <pre><code>col1,col2,col3,col4,col5,col6,col7,col8,col9,col10,col11
  
  w0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10        
  w1  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10    
  w2  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10   
  w3  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a way to do this?  Any help is greatly appreciated!</p>