[Tutor] striping whitespace from files (original) (raw)

Alan Gauld alan.gauld at blueyonder.co.uk
Sun Jul 11 00:46:59 CEST 2004

>>> f1 = open("citrate.txt",'r') >>> f2 = f1.read()

This reads the entire file into f2

>>> from string import strip, split >>> f2 = f1.readlines()

This reads an empty line since you are already at the end of the file. It overwrites all the data you previously read! YOu probably want to go straight to the split/strip operation now... A list comprehension might be a useful construct to think about...

>>> list = split(f2,'\n')

Using a builtin name(list is the conversion to list function) is a bad idea. Also you could use the more modern version:

lines = f2.split('\n')

But since the line is empty it will still have no effect.

>>> for i in fstrings: f1strings = string.split([i])

This tries to split a list containing i, I'm not sure what you even expect here. I'm even less sure what will actually be happening!

print f1strings

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#86>", line 2, in -toplevel- f1strings = string.split([i]) File "C:\Python23\lib\string.py", line 121, in split return s.split(sep, maxsplit) AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'split' >>>

The error being because of the list construct...

HTH,

Alan G.

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