CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Jo4368
Jo4368

Reputation: 1

Python split function not working in while loop

I'm having an issue where I'm trying to pull the elements out of a text file that has the format [a b c d e...] into a list, and using split() to do this. This seems to work perfectly when outside the while loop, and the printed variable displays

 ['2016-2017', '1', '1', '1', '4', '1', '2', '2', '1', '0', '1', '1', '3', '1', '5', '0', '3', 
  '2', '4', '4', '2', '4', '2', '0', '1', '0', '4', '3', '2', '2', '3', '4', '4', '1', '2', 
  '0', '2', '6', '7']

which is exactly what I want. However, when I try to do this in the while loop using split(), I get an infinite loop of empty lists. I've tried removing split() from the loop and that prints

2017-2018 2 1 1 3 0 3 4 1 4 0 1 0 1 1 1 5 2 1 3 5 2 1 4 1 2 2 1 1 2 4 3 2 1 1 2 0 1 5

for all lines in the file, but I want it to look like the first printed variable.

My code for reference:

with open(HOTSPUR, 'r') as infile:
    goals_line = infile.readline().strip().split()
    print(goals_line)
    
    while goals_line != '':
        goals_line = infile.readline().strip().split()
        print(goals_line)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 296

Answers (1)

Mark Tolonen
Mark Tolonen

Reputation: 177481

goals_line is a list so will never compare to ''. As you stated, you eventually get empty lists ([]) so you could check for that. But a better solution is to loop through the lines of the file:

with open(HOTSPUR) as infile:
    for line in infile:
        goals_line = line.strip().split()
        print(goals_line)

Upvotes: 4

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