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Thanks a ton for the help guys! I have officially written my first Python code to save me a day of typing and I can't thank you enough. Not only have you save

Thanks a ton for the help guys! I have officially written my first Python code to save me a day of typing and I can't thank you enough. Not only have you saved my fingers, you have helped to spark the proverbial fire under my butt with regards to learning Python. I've been removed from programming for so long that I forgot how neat it was to write something and watch it go. Here is the final script for anyone who cares. Can it be optimized? in_file = open('c:/WVASA/original.txt', 'r') out_file = open('c:/WVASA/output.txt', 'w') for line in in_file.readlines(): county = line[:11].rstrip() email = line[12:42].rstrip() name = line[43:72].rstrip() street = line[73:98].rstrip() city = line[99:117].rstrip() zipcode = line[118:].rstrip() out_file.write(' <tr>bgcolor="#006699">\n') out_file.write(' <td>' + county + '</td>\n') out_file.write(' <td>' + name + '</td>\n') out_file.write(' <td>' + street + '</td>\n') out_file.write(' <td>' + city + '</td>\n') out_file.write(' <td>' + zipcode + '</td>\n') out_file.write(' <td><a href="mailto:' + email + '">' + email + '</a></td>\n') out_file.write(' </tr>\n') in_file.close() out_file.close()

Deejahll 16y ago
- readlines() is redundant for filehandle objects, you can omit it. - Prefer Python's string formatting operator. I even prefer the extended dict-compatible syntax. - close() is called automatically when the filehandles are garbage-collected; you can usually omit it for tasks like this. - ranges (like those in brackets) are exclusive, not inclusive. So I suspect you have an off-by-one error there. Thus: in_file = open('c:/WVASA/original.txt', 'r') out_file = open('c:/WVASA/output.txt', 'w') template = ''' <tr bgcolor="#006699"> <td>%(country)s</td> <td>%(name)s</td> <td>%(street)s</td> <td>%(city)s</td> <td>%(zipcode)s</td> <td><a href="mailto:%(email)s">%(email)s</a></td> </tr>''' template = template.strip() for line in in_file: out_file.write(template % { 'county': line[:12].rstrip(), 'email': line[12:43].rstrip(), 'name': line[43:73].rstrip(), 'street': line[73:99].rstrip(), 'city': line[99:118].rstrip(), 'zipcode': line[118:].rstrip(), })
- Deejahll 16y ago
  Also, does Windows support redirection? If this were a one-off task that I were to do on my Linux box, I'd have written only: import sys template = ... # (same as above) for line in sys.stdin: print template % { ... # (same as above) } Then execute like this: python mycode.py < original.txt > output.txt
- Random_Person 16y ago
  As far as the ranges issue, that took some tweaking, but there was a good deal of white space between columns, so I got it tweaked by trial and error. I had no idea it was exclusive though. Is it exclusive on both ends? I love the template thing. I've got to read up on that! On close() - I found that if I didn't execute a close, and I opened the output in a text editor and attempted to save it I got an error that it was being accessed by another process. I love this community, you guys are awesome. Thank you.

Deejahll 16y ago

- readlines() is redundant for filehandle objects, you can omit it. - Prefer Python's string formatting operator. I even prefer the extended dict-compatible syntax. - close() is called automatically when the filehandles are garbage-collected; you can usually omit it for tasks like this. - ranges (like those in brackets) are exclusive, not inclusive. So I suspect you have an off-by-one error there. Thus: in_file = open('c:/WVASA/original.txt', 'r') out_file = open('c:/WVASA/output.txt', 'w') template = ''' <tr bgcolor="#006699"> <td>%(country)s</td> <td>%(name)s</td> <td>%(street)s</td> <td>%(city)s</td> <td>%(zipcode)s</td> <td><a href="mailto:%(email)s">%(email)s</a></td> </tr>''' template = template.strip() for line in in_file: out_file.write(template % { 'county': line[:12].rstrip(), 'email': line[12:43].rstrip(), 'name': line[43:73].rstrip(), 'street': line[73:99].rstrip(), 'city': line[99:118].rstrip(), 'zipcode': line[118:].rstrip(), })

Deejahll 16y ago
Also, does Windows support redirection? If this were a one-off task that I were to do on my Linux box, I'd have written only: import sys template = ... # (same as above) for line in sys.stdin: print template % { ... # (same as above) } Then execute like this: python mycode.py < original.txt > output.txt
Random_Person 16y ago
As far as the ranges issue, that took some tweaking, but there was a good deal of white space between columns, so I got it tweaked by trial and error. I had no idea it was exclusive though. Is it exclusive on both ends? I love the template thing. I've got to read up on that! On close() - I found that if I didn't execute a close, and I opened the output in a text editor and attempted to save it I got an error that it was being accessed by another process. I love this community, you guys are awesome. Thank you.