CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-2.7
Tom Pitts
Tom Pitts

Reputation: 600

Reading each line form a text file and determining if it has another letter

I have a text file that looks like this:

A 12 YDUSD ASSDAS FSDDSFSD SDFF

AA FSDFSD FSDF SDFSDG GSDDSFS SDF

AB SDFSDF SDFFSDFDS SDSDSDSDS

ACC SDFSDDSDFSD EW12 SDFSD 3322

ACDD FDSDSFS SDFGSDG DSGSDF

AB FSDFSD SDF34 223DSFSD

ABBD 2332 ADSDFDSFDS

And so on and so fourth for about 500 different beginnings to each line. I want to write a program that will get the line, take everything from it before the first tab (there is a tab between each column) and put it into a list like this:

['A', 'AA', 'AB', 'ACC', 'ACDD', 'AB', 'ABBD']

This is my program so far but it doesn't quite work:

file1 = open("filename", "r")
file2 = open("filename2", "w")
i=0
k = 0
sp500list = []
with open("filename1") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()
while (abc < len(lines)):
    LineStr = str(lines[i])
    j = 0
    if (LineStr[j] != ''):     
        j = j + 1        
        if (LineStr[j] !=''):             
            j = j + 1
        elif (LineStr[j] == ' '):
            sp500list.append(str(LineStr[:2]))
            i = i + 1
            if (LineStr[j] !=''):
                j = j + 1
            elif (LineStr[j] == ' '):
                sp500list.append(str(LineStr[:3]))
                i = i + 1
                if (LineStr[j] !=''):
                    sp500list.append(str(LineStr[:4]))                    
                    i = i + 1
                    j = 0        

    elif (LineStr[j] == ' '):
        i = i + 1        
    print sp500list     
    abc = abc + 1

So far all it does is return an empty array, can anyone help?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 71

Answers (1)

timgeb
timgeb

Reputation: 78800

This can be simplified. split each line by '\t', and take the first element of the resulting list.

>>> with open('file.txt') as f:
...     result = [line.split('\t', 1)[0] for line in f]
... 
>>> result
['A', 'AA', 'AB', 'ACC', 'ACDD', 'AB', 'ABBD']

Alternatively, use result = [line[:line.find('\t')] for line in f].

Upvotes: 1

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