If you want those numbers to be treated as text, you need to quote them in the CSV. That means that you want to make sure your items are string types in Python already.

You don't say how you're writing the CSV from Python, but if you're just using the csv module, you'll want to use a quote option different from the default (default is QUOTE_MINIMAL). QUOTE_NONNUMERIC is probably what you would want to use here. The documentation for that can be found here.

Here is the example from the doc on how to use this for writing to CSV:

import csv
with open('eggs.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=' ',
                            quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])

So your code could be modified as follows:

with open(filehandle, 'wb') as csvfile:
data_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter = ",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
if printHeaders:
    csvfile.write(', '.join(these_headers) + '\n')
if dummy:
    csvfile.write(dummy + '\n')

If you want those numbers to be treated as text, you need to quote them in the CSV. That means that you want to make sure your items are string types in Python already.

You don't say how you're writing the CSV from Python, but if you're just using the csv module, you'll want to use a quote option different from the default (default is QUOTE_MINIMAL). QUOTE_NONNUMERIC is probably what you would want to use here. The documentation for that can be found here.

Here is the example from the doc on how to use this for writing to CSV:

import csv
with open('eggs.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=' ',
                            quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])

So your code could be modified as follows:

with open(filehandle, 'wb') as csvfile:
data_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter = ",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
if printHeaders:
    csvfile.write(', '.join(these_headers) + '\n')
if dummy:
    csvfile.write(dummy + '\n')

Since you say you are going to run a SearchCursor through this file, why not just iterate through the data after you read it into your script, instead of first writing it to disk? That sounds like it may be easier.

If you want those numbers to be treated as text, you need to quote them in the CSV. That means that you want to make sure your items are string types in Python already.

You don't say how you're writing the CSV from Python, but if you're just using the csv module, you'll want to use a quote option different from the default (default is QUOTE_MINIMAL). QUOTE_NONNUMERIC is probably what you would want to use here. The documentation for that can be found here.

If you want those numbers to be treated as text, you need to quote them in the CSV. That means that you want to make sure your items are string types in Python already.

You don't say how you're writing the CSV from Python, but if you're just using the csv module, you'll want to use a quote option different from the default (default is QUOTE_MINIMAL). QUOTE_NONNUMERIC is probably what you would want to use here. The documentation for that can be found here.

Here is the example from the doc on how to use this for writing to CSV:

import csv
with open('eggs.csv', 'w', newline='') as csvfile:
    spamwriter = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter=' ',
                            quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam'] * 5 + ['Baked Beans'])
    spamwriter.writerow(['Spam', 'Lovely Spam', 'Wonderful Spam'])

So your code could be modified as follows:

with open(filehandle, 'wb') as csvfile:
data_writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter = ",", quotechar='"', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONNUMERIC)
if printHeaders:
    csvfile.write(', '.join(these_headers) + '\n')
if dummy:
    csvfile.write(dummy + '\n')