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Parse CSV and format transactions

KikoffSoftware Engineer · Technical Screen
MediumSoftware EngineerTechnical ScreenData Manipulation (SQL/Python)

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This question evaluates a candidate's ability to parse and format structured transactional data, emphasizing CSV parsing, trimming whitespace, numeric formatting to two decimal places, and preserving input row order.

Given a CSV file containing many transactional records with columns Merchant, Amount, Date (YYYY-MM-DD), and Status, write a script to parse the file and print, for each transaction, the following two-line block exactly in the given order:

| {Merchant} ${Amount with two decimals} | | {Date} {Status} |

Example for one row:

| Merchant $10.04 | | 2020-01-01 pending |

Requirements:

  • Preserve the input row order.
  • Format Amount as a dollar value with two decimals (e.g., $10. 04).
  • Trim surrounding whitespace in fields before formatting.
  • Output one block per transaction with the same delimiter lines and spacing pattern.