CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonunicodetypeerrorraw-input
Rampant
Rampant

Reputation: 167

Python Script TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, list found

I'm writing a simple script to search a .txt document for a search word. The script so far will: • Prompt for a file name • Prompt for a word to search for

The prompts work, followed by "TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, list found". I've read other posts on this error, but can't identify why this is happening, so I can move on to the steps: • Open the file in Append mode • Append (print) the number of lines the keyword appears on in the file.

Please note: This worked until I added the user prompts.

import sys
import os

f = file(raw_input("Enter filename: "), 'a')
name_file = raw_input("Input search terms, comma separated: ").lower().split(",")
my_file = open(name_file, "a")
#removed {open(name_file}[0] from above line
search = [x.strip(' ') for x in f]
count = {}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2395

Answers (2)

Alex Ivanov
Alex Ivanov

Reputation: 833

I would suggest sys.argv.

You run a command:

$ myscript.py file.txt term1 term2 term3

Script:

import sys

print sys.argv

Output:

['./myscript.py', 'myscript.py', 'file.txt', 'term1', 'term2', 'term3']

Upvotes: 0

Dleep
Dleep

Reputation: 1065

string.split(",")

returns a list of strings. i.e:

>>myString = "Hello buddy, how are you?"

>>myList = mystring.split(",")

>>myList
["Hello buddy"," how are you?"]

name_file is a list, and your code explodes because open expects a string as its first argument, not a list

Upvotes: 1

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