CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonfile
AK9309
AK9309

Reputation: 791

Setting up a table using tabulate

I have a txt file for several people in a form

[Name1, age1, height1]
[Name2, age2, height2]
etc.

I want to read the file and append line to a table.

f = open('my_file.txt','r')
table=[]
for line in f:
table.append(line)

a = tabulate(table,headers=["name","age","height"])

That doesn't work. I believe the problem is that after I append all the lines I get 

table = ["[Name1, age1, height1]\n", "[Name2, age2, height2]\n", etc.],

while I want it to be 

table = [[Name1, age1, height1], [Name2, age2, height2], etc.]

Upvotes: 1

Views: 550

Answers (2)

Kasravnd
Kasravnd

Reputation: 107287

You can simply loop over the file object and use ast.literal_eval within a list comprehension to convert your lines to list objects :

from ast import literal_eval
with open('my_file.txt','r') as f:
     table = [literal_eval(line) for line in f]

Note that since using literal_eval may raise SyntaxError or ValueErrorfor invalid line formats like Name1, age1, height1] you can use a try_except to handle such cases:

with open('my_file.txt','r') as f:
     table = []       
     for line in f:
        try:
            table.append[literal_eval(line)]
        except (SyntaxError,ValueError):
            # do stuff

Also note that as a more pythonic way for dealing with file objects you better to use with statement which will close the file automatically at the end of the block.

Upvotes: 1

Hasan Ramezani
Hasan Ramezani

Reputation: 5194

>>> table = [line.rstrip('\n')[1:-1].split(',') for line in open('file')]
>>> table
[['Name1', ' age1', ' height1'], ['Name2', ' age2', ' height2']]

Upvotes: 1

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