CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
user3019389
user3019389

Reputation: 31

How to read each line from a file into list word by word in Python

I'm trying to read line into a list where each word on that line is different argument. For example when my text file contains:

Word1, Word2, Some different words,separated by comma,but no space
Word3, Word4, Some different words,separated by comma,but no space

I would like to get lists like that:

['Word1', 'Word2', 'Some different words,separated by comma,but no space'],
['Word3', 'Word4', 'Some different words,separated by comma,but no space']

Maybe I can even get list like this:

['Word1', 'Word2', 'Some different words','separated by comma', 'but no space']

So far I've managed to get this work when there is one line in text file by reading each word into list.

list_words = f.read().split()

It gives me output:

['Word1', 'Word2', 'Some different words,separated by comma,but no space']

How could I do this when I have multiple lines? Also if I later want to print out first arguments from both lists, can I use list_words[0] and it will give me automatically 'Word1' and 'Word3' ?

I hope this explanation was clear enough.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3750

Answers (2)

Cory Kramer
Cory Kramer

Reputation: 117856

You could use the following list comprehension

list_words = [i.split(',') for i in f]

Upvotes: 3

fredtantini
fredtantini

Reputation: 16556

If you want to split with a comma followed by a space, you could use re.split:

>>> with open('f.txt') as f:
...   print [re.split(', ',line) for line in f]
...
[['Word1', 'Word2', 'Some different words,separated by comma,but no space\n'],
 ['Word3', 'Word4', 'Some different words,separated by comma,but no space\n']]

If you want to split on every comma, just use str.split:

>>> with open('f.txt') as f:
...   print [line.split(',') for line in f]
...
[['Word1', ' Word2', ' Some different words', 'separated by comma', 'but no space\n'],
 ['Word3', ' Word4', ' Some different words', 'separated by comma', 'but no space\n']]

you can use strip to get rid of the \n:

>>> with open('f.txt') as f:
...   print [line.strip().split(',') for line in f]
...   # or print [re.split(', ',line.strip()) for line in f]
...
[['Word1', ' Word2', ' Some different words', 'separated by comma', 'but no space'],
 ['Word3', ' Word4', ' Some different words', 'separated by comma', 'but no space']]

In fact, you can also use line.strip().split(', '). I just forgot that you can have a delimiter of more than 1 character…

Upvotes: 2

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