CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Omik
Omik

Reputation: 13

How to set a class-wide variable that is referenced within the classes methods

I'm a little bit new to python and programming in general so I'm not sure if I'm using the terminology correctly but,

I have a short program that I am writing that will read the words in a text file, split them into an array and then output only words with a specified length.

However, I have run into an issue when trying to set up the array and file variables. While overall the program works, in each function I am re-instantiating the file variable (File = open() to File.close) and I am wondering if there is any way to make the variables class-wide.

I have tried making them class-wide by indenting before the functions, but then I get an error because name and set_length have not been instantiated yet.

As I said, this is one of the first times I am working with classes, so any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

class FileParser:

    def __init__(self,name,set_length):
        self.name = name
        self.set_length = set_length

    def Print_words(self):

        File = open(self.name, "r")
        Allwords = File.read()
        words = Allwords.split("\n")
        File.close()

        for word in words:
            if len(word) <= self.set_length:
                print(word)

    def length_counter(self):

        File = open(self.name, "r")
        Allwords = File.read()
        words = Allwords.split("\n")
        File.close()

        x = 0

        for word in words:
            x += 1
        text = "there are {} many words in this file".format(x)
        return text

Upvotes: 0

Views: 232

Answers (1)

Barmar
Barmar

Reputation: 780798

It shouldn't be a class variable, since each FileParser instance reads a different file.

You can read the file in the __init__ method and assign the list of words to an instance attribute.

class FileParser:

    def __init__(self,name,set_length):
        self.name = name
        self.set_length = set_length
        with open(name, "r") as f:
            data = f.read()
        self.words = data.split("\n")

    def Print_words(self):
        for word in self.words:
            if len(word) <= self.set_length:
                print(word)

    def length_counter(self):
        text = "there are {} many words in this file".format(len(self.words))
        return text

Upvotes: 1

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