Keep (un-deprecate) read_table() for API stability · Issue #25220 · pandas-dev/pandas (original) (raw)

Problem description

read_table() got deprecated in favour of using read_csv().

Using read_csv() to read tab/space delimited files is counter-intuitive. According to the docs and the related issues, both share the same code and it is not clear why the one function should be preferred over the other, and that change may even break existing code.

In my point of view read_table() is the more general function and read_csv() is a special case. Why would you deprecate (and then remove) the more useful function? It is already annoying to use to_csv() to write space/tab delimited files. And as I can see it, it comes down to two lines of code.

Proposed solution

Keep both functions as they are (un-deprecate read_table()) or rename the function to have a more general name like read_txt() (as in numpy.genfromtxt()) or similar.