title: When writing to a csv file, why is each letter in a column?
body: <p>The code I am using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import urllib2
  import csv
  from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
  
  url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts"
  soup = BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen(url))
  
  fl = open('locations.csv', 'w')
  
  def unique(countries):
      seen = set()
      for country in countries:
          l = country.lower()
          if l in seen:
              continue
          seen.add(l)
          yield country
  
  
  locs = []
  for row in soup.select('table.wikitable tr'):
      cells = row.find_all('td')
      if cells:
          for location in cells[3].find_all(text=True):
              locs.extend(location.split())
  
  locs2 = []            
  for locations in unique(locs):
      locations = locs2.extend(locations.split())
  print sorted(locs2)
  
  writer = csv.writer(fl)
  writer.writerow(['location'])
  for values in sorted(locs2):
      writer.writerow(values)
  
  fl.close()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I print the code I am writing I get a <code>u'</code> in front of each element which I think is why it is outputting this way. I tried using <code>.strip(u'')</code> but it gives me an error that <code>.strip</code> cannot be used as it is a list. 
  What am I doing wrong?</p>