CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
John O C
John O C

Reputation: 11

How to pass words to an array not single characters - Python

So I'm reading in a txt file in python and want to get a list of all the words in the file. I am doing so by this method.

def parse_in(file_location, input_name):
    all_words = []
    with open(file_location + input_name,'r') as f:
        for line in f:
            for word in line.split():
                all_words += word
    f.close
    return all_words

Instead of all_words returning actual words it returns a list of single characters like ['A', 'B', 'C'] and so on.

But when debugging I can see that the variable word is an actual word and not just characters. Where am I going wrong here?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 87

Answers (4)

kederrac
kederrac

Reputation: 17322

if you use context manager you do not need to close the file, and for simplicity you could just read entire file and just use split method 

def parse_in(file_location, input_name):
    all_words = []
    with open(file_location + input_name,'r') as f:
        all_words = f.read().split()

    return all_words

Upvotes: 0

cg909
cg909

Reputation: 2546

all_words += word extends the list all_words with the items in word. As word is a string, the characters are appended, as if you had iterated through it with for.

Use all_words.append(word) to append the word to the word list.

Upvotes: 0

khelwood
khelwood

Reputation: 59095

Use

all_words.append(word)

instead of

all_words += word

If you use += then word is treated as a sequence, so the individual characters are each appended to the list.

Alternatively, you can use +=, and simplify your loop to:

for line in f:
    all_words += line.split()

Upvotes: 3

Amit Nanaware
Amit Nanaware

Reputation: 3346

try this:

def parse_in(file_location, input_name):
    all_words = []
    with open(file_location + input_name,'r') as f:
        for line in f:
            all_words += line.split()
    return all_words

Upvotes: 0

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