title: Reorganize a CSV so Dates are not column Headers
body: <p>I am trying to reorganize an excel table (or csv) so that dates are no longer column headers.  I'm using a limited knowledge of python to attempt to do this but for lack of knowing where to start I can use some assistance. </p>
  
  <p>Under each date is a record of what happened that day for a particular place.  Null values can be skipped.  Some cell contain a "--" and can be converted to a 0.  I would like to make a column to for the date and a column to denote the numeric reading for the day.  The place name is a new row if it was monitored that day.  </p>
  
  <p>Example (smh at the person that started it this way):</p>
  
  <pre><code>Name,7/1/2009,7/2/2009,7/3/2009,7/4/2009..... (and so on to the present)
  Place A,,5,3,
  Place B,0,,23,--
  Place C,1,2,,35
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I would like is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Name, Date, Reading
  Place A, 7/2/2009, 5
  Place A, 7/3/2009, 3
  Place B, 7/1/2009, 0
  Place B, 7/4/2009, 0   &lt;--- Even though this is a dash originally it can be converted to a 0 to keep the number an int.  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>There are hundreds of rows (places) and the columns (dates) have gotten to BPD (that's right 1772 columns!). </p>