Question: I have an Excel table saved as a CSV that looks something like (when it's in Excel) this just longer:

```
    Monday  Tuesday     Wednesday   Thursday    Friday
marsbar 9   8   0   6   5
reeses  0   0   0   9   0
twix    2   3   0   5   6
snickers    9   8   0   6   5

```

(The format isnt perfect, but you get the gist--candy bars/day). I want to write a program for python in which I could input a list of candy bar names in the program

```
>>> ['twix', 'reeses']

```

and it would give me the days of the week on which those candy bars were eaten and how many candy bars in the list were eaten on that day. The result would look something like this:

```
Monday 2
Tuesday 3
Wednesday 0
Thursday 14
Friday 6

```

could someone help me write such a program?

Answer: 
We can *help you* write such a program, yes.

We will not write the program for you (that's not what StackOverflow is about).

Python comes with a [CSV module](http://www.python.org/doc//current/library/csv.html), which will read in an Excel-saved CSV file. 

You can store your data in a [dictionary](http://www.python.org/doc//current/library/csv.html#csv.DictReader), which will make it easier to retrieve.

Good luck!
In addition to the other answers, you may also want to take a look at the xlrd module, as it can deal with the excel spreadsheets directly if you'd rather not deal with CSV business. The module allows you to read entire (or ranges) of rows/columns at a time as well as grabbing individual cells and you can iterate through everything to search for what you want and then return whatever related 'values' you want in the same row/column from where you found your search criteria.