Replace space-char by newline-char within max-line-length in python - python

I am trying to write a python script,
which breaks a continuous string into lines,
when the max_line_length has been exceeded.
It shall not break words,
and searches therefore the last occurrence of a whitespace-char,
which will be replaced by a newline-char.
For some reason it does not break within the specified limit.
E.g. when defining the max_line_length = 80,
the text sometimes breaks at 82 or 83, etc.
Since quite some time I am trying to fix the problem,
however it feels like i am having the tunnel vision
and don't see the problem here:
#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
print('usage: $ python3 breaktext.py <max_line_length> <file>')
print('example: $ python3 breaktext.py 80 infile.txt')
exit()
filename = str(sys.argv[2])
with open(filename, 'r') as file:
text_str = file.read().replace('\n', '')
m = int(sys.argv[1]) # max_line_length
text_list = list(text_str) # convert string to list
l = 0; # line_number
i = m+1 # line_character_index
index = m+1 # total_list_index
while index < len(text_list):
while text_list[l * m + i] != ' ':
i -= 1
pass
text_list[l * m + i] = '\n'
l += 1
i = m+1
index += m+1
pass
text_str = ''.join(text_list)
print(text_str)

I guess we'll take this from the top.
text_str = file.read().replace('\n', '')
Here's one assumption about the input data I don't know if it's true. You're replacing all the newline characters with nothing; if there weren't spaces next to them, this means the code below will never break the lines in the same places.
text_list = list(text_str) # convert string to list
This splits the input file into single character strings. I guess you might have done so to make it mutable, such that you can replace individual characters, but it's a very expensive operation and loses all the features of a string. Python is a high level language that would allow you to split into e.g. words instead.
index = m+1 # total_list_index
while index < len(text_list):
#...
index += m+1
Let's consider what this means. We're not entering into the loop if index exceeds the text_list length. But index is advancing in steps of m+1. So we're splitting math.floor(len(text)/(max_line_length+1)) times. Unless every line is exactly max_line_length characters, not counting its space we replace with a newline, that's too few times. Too few times means too long lines, at least at the end.
l = 0; # line_number
i = m+1 # line_character_index
#loop:
while text_list[l * m + i] != ' ':
i -= 1
text_list[l * m + i] = '\n'
l += 1
i = m+1
This is making things difficult with index math. Quite clearly the one index we ever use is l * m + i. This moves in a quite odd way; it searches backwards for a space, then leaps forward as l increments and i resets. Whatever position it had reversed to is lost as all the leaps are in steps of m.
Let's apply m=5 to the string "Fee fie faw fum who did you see now". For the first iteration, 0 * 5 + 5+1 hits the second word, and i seeks back to the first space. The first line then is "Fee", as expected. The second search starts at 1*5 + 5+1, which is a space, and the second line becomes "fie faw", which already exceeds our limit of 5! The reason is that l * m isn't the beginning of the line; it's actually in the middle of "fie", a discrepancy which can only grow as you continue through the file. It grows whenever you split off a line that is shorter than m.
The solution involves remembering where you did your split. That could be as simple as replacing l * m with index, and updating it by index += i instead of m+1.
Another odd effect happens if you ever encounter a word that exceeds the maximum line length. Beyond meaning a line is longer than the limit, i will still search backwards until it finds a space; that space could then be in an earlier line altogether, producing extra short lines as well as too long ones. That's a result of handling the entire text as one array and not limiting which section we're looking at.
Personally I'd much rather use Python's built in methods, such as str.rindex, which can find a particular character in a given region within a string:
s = "Fee fie faw fum who did you see now"
maxlen = 5
start = 8
end = s.rindex(' ', start, start+maxlen)
print(s[start:end])
start = end + 1
We also, as PaulMcG pointed out, can go full "batteries included" and use the standard library textwrap module for the entire task.

Related

Creating a File and then Loop for an Incrementing Value

I am attempting to create a loop that creates a file named "/tmp/newfile.txt" and creates 29 lines of text. Line 1 should read: "I see 0 sheep". For each line, 1 sheep should be added and a new line created to reflect that until 29 sheep (and lines) are reached.
x = 0
myDoc = myDoc.readfiles("/tmp/newfile.txt", "r+")
myDoc.write("I see" + str(x) + "sheep")
for line in myDoc.readfiles():
x = x + 1
myDoc.append(x)
print(myDoc)
if x == 30
break;
First, what I tried to do is create a new file and put it into a variable (myDoc) that would open it. I specified w+ so that I would have the ability to read the file and write on it. I gave the changing number a variable 'x'.
The function I intended to, for each line in the file, write "I see x sheep". Afterward, add 1 to the current value of x and append it so it's added to the file. After this, print it so I can see the line(s). Once that value reached 30, cease the loop because 29 is the number of lines I need.
My errors have to do with indentation and nothing being printed at all. I am extremely new to this.
Welcome to StackOverflow!
There seem to be a couple of issues in the code:
Indentation / Syntax Errors - It seems that you are using Python, which follows strict indentation and whitespace rules. An indent is inserted when you enter a new local scope / new control flow / enter an if/elif/else statement or a while or for loop, to separate it from the current scope.
You'd need to remove the space on the left side on line 3 and line 6.
Also, on line 8 there should be a colon(:) after the if x==30.
The mode used (w+) isn't going to work as expected.
This mode overwrites a file if it already exists and allows you to read and write to that file. Instead, you would need the r+ mode.
There's a great explanation & flowchart in this answer explaining the various file modes - https://stackoverflow.com/a/30566011/13307211
The for loop can't iterate over myDoc.
The open function gives a file object (TextIOWrapper), which can't be iterated over. You could use the myDoc.readfiles() method, which returns a list of lines present in the file and loop over that - for line in myDoc.readfiles().
printing myDoc and using .append() with myDoc wouldn't work as expected. It's representing a file object, which doesn't have an append method. Also, I feel like there might have been some mixed logic here - were you trying to iterate over myDoc like an array and hence pushing value to it?
I'd suggest removing the append part as the past value of x isn't going to be needed for what you want to do.
After applying the above, you should end up with code that looks like this -
x = 0
myDoc = open("./newfile.txt", "r+")
for line in myDoc.readlines():
myDoc.write("I see" + str(x) + "sheep\n")
x = x + 1
if x == 30:
break
Now, this doesn't exactly do what you want it to do...
The first thing we should do is update the for loop - a for loop should be structured in a way where it has a start, an end, and an increment, or it should iterate over a range of values. Python has a neat range function that allows you to iterate between values.
for x in range(1, 10):
print(x)
the above would print values from 1 to 10, excluding 10.
updating our for loop, we can change the code to -
myDoc = open("./newfile.txt", "r+")
for x in range(1, 30):
myDoc.write("I see" + str(x) + "sheep")
we could also use a while loop here -
myDoc = open("./newfile.txt", "r+")
for x in range(1, 30):
myDoc.write("I see" + str(x) + "sheep")
this makes the file but without the lines and without the right formatting. "I see " + str(x) + " sheep" should fix the sentence, but to print the string on multiple lines instead of the same line, you would need to use the newline character(\n) and add it at the end of the string -
myDoc = open("./newfile.txt", "r+")
for x in range(1, 30):
myDoc.write("I see" + str(x) + "sheep\n")

Returning every instance of whatever's between two strings in a file [Python 3]

What I'm trying to do is open a file, then find every instance of '[\x06I"' and '\x06;', then return whatever is between the two.
Since this is not a standard text file (it's map data from RPG maker) readline() will not work for my purposes, as the file is not at all formatted in such a way that the data I want is always neatly within one line by itself.
What I'm doing right now is loading the file into a list with read(), then simply deleting characters from the very beginning until I hit the string '[\x06I'. Then I scan ahead to find '\x06;', store what's between them as a string, append said string to a list, then resume at the character after the semicolon I found.
It works, and I ended up with pretty much exactly what I wanted, but I feel like that's the worst possible way to go about it. Is there a more efficient way?
My relevant code:
while eofget == 0:
savor = 0
while savor == 0 or eofget == 0:
if line[0:4] == '[\x06I"':
x = 4
spork = 0
while spork == 0:
x += 1
if line[x] == '\x06':
if line[x+1] == ';':
spork = x
savor = line[5:spork] + "\n"
line = line[x+1:]
linefinal[lineinc] = savor
lineinc += 1
elif line[x:x+7] == '#widthi':
print("eof reached")
spork = 1
eofget = 1
savor = 0
elif line[x:x+7] == '#widthi':
print("finished map " + mapname)
eofget = 1
savor = 0
break
else:
line = line[1:]
You can just ignore the variable names. I just name things the first thing that comes to mind when I'm doing one-offs like this. And yes, I am aware a few things in there don't make any sense, but I'm saving cleanup for when I finalize the code.
When eofget gets flipped on this subroutine terminates and the next map is loaded. Then it repeats. The '#widthi' check is basically there to save time, since it's present in every map and indicates the beginning of the map data, AKA data I don't care about.
I feel this is a natural case to use regular expressions. Using the findall method:
>>> s = 'testing[\x06I"text in between 1\x06;filler text[\x06I"text in between 2\x06;more filler[\x06I"text in between \n with some line breaks \n included in the text\x06;ending'
>>> import re
>>> p = re.compile('\[\x06I"(.+?)\x06;', re.DOTALL)
>>> print(p.findall(s))
['text in between 1', 'text in between 2', 'text in between \n with some line breaks \n included in the text']
The regex string '\[\x06I"(.+?)\x06;'can be interpreted as follows:
Match as little as possible (denoted by ?) of an undetermined number of unspecified characters (denoted by .+) surrounded by '[\x06I"' and '\x06;', and only return the enclosed text (denoted by the parentheses around .+?)
Adding re.DOTALL in the compile makes the .? match line breaks as well, allowing multi-line text to be captured.
I would use split():
fulltext = 'adsfasgaseg[\x06I"thisiswhatyouneed\x06;sdfaesgaegegaadsf[\x06I"this is the second what you need \x06;asdfeagaeef'
parts = fulltext.split('[\x06I"') # split by first label
results = []
for part in parts:
if '\x06;' in part: # if second label exists in part
results.append(part.split('\x06;')[0]) # get the part until the second label
print results

Iterating through characters in a python string and summing their values

So I have a very simple task. The Project Euler problem Names Scores gives us a file with a set of strings(which are names). Now you have to sort these names in the alphabetical order and then compute what is known as a name score for each of these names and sum them all up. The name score calculation is pretty simple. All you have to do is take a name and then sum up the values of the alphabets in the name and then multiply this sum with the position that the name has on the list. Obviously this seems a pretty simple question.
Being a python beginner, I wanted to try this out on python and being a beginner this was the code I wrote out. I did use list comprehensions as well along with a sum, but that gives me the same answer. Here is my code:
def name_score(s):
# print sum((ord(c)-96) for c in s)
s1 = 0;
for c in s:
s1 = s1 + (ord(c) - 96)
print s1
return s1
# print ord(c) - 96
myList = []
f = open('p022_names.txt')
for line in f:
myList.append(line.lower())
count = 0;
totalSum = 0;
for line in sorted(myList):
count = count + 1;
totalSum += (name_score(line) * count)
print totalSum
Now the file p022_names.txt contains only one line "colin". So the function name_score("colin") should return 53. Now try whatever I always end up getting the value -33. I am using PyDev on Eclipse. Now here is a curious anomaly. If I just used the list variable and populated it with the value myList = ["colin"] in the code, I get the correct answer. Honestly I don't know what is happening. Can anybody throw some light into what is happening here. There is a similar loop also in the program to calculate totalSum, but that doesn't seem to have an issue.
[EDIT] After the issue was pointed out, I am posting an updated revision of the code which works.
def name_score(s):
return sum((ord(c)-96) for c in s)
with open('p022_names.txt') as f:
myList = f.read().splitlines()
print sum((name_score(line.lower()) * (ind+1)) for ind,line in enumerate(sorted(myList)))
96 - 53 - 33 = 10
That happens because you have a newline character ("\n") in your file, thus your line is not "colin" but "colin\n".
To get rid of the newline character, multiple approaches could work. Here is an example:
Replace your line:
for line in f:
with:
for line in f.read().splitlines():
Could it be because you didn't close the file? As in f.close()?

Iteration issue in python

[Code below question]
The idea is to expand on python's built-in split() function. This function takes two strings, one that needs to be split, and the second is what characters to omit and split at in the first string. This code has worked, but for some reason with this input, it will not iterate anything past the last comma. In other words, no matter the input in this format, it won't append anything past the final comma. I can't figure out why. I have gone line through line of this code and I can't find out where I am losing it.
Why is my code not iterating through any characters past the last comma?
def split_string(source,splitlist):
## Variables ##
output = []
start, start_pos , tracker = 0 , 0 , 0
## Iterations ##
for char in source:
start = source.find(char,start)
if char in splitlist:
tracker += 1
if tracker <= 1:
end_pos = source.find(char, start)
output.append(source[start_pos:end_pos])
start_pos = end_pos + 1
else:
start_pos+=1
else:
tracker = 0
return output
out = split_string("First Name,Last Name,Street Address,City,State,Zip Code",",")
print out
Because your code does not have any code to append from the last comma till the end of string.
end_pos = source.find(char, start)
output.append(source[start_pos:end_pos])
Your need to finally append a range between last comma and string length.
Add the following after the loop ends.
output.append(source[end_pos+1:];
Modified code:
http://ideone.com/9Khu4g

Python: Read large file in chunks

Hey there, I have a rather large file that I want to process using Python and I'm kind of stuck as to how to do it.
The format of my file is like this:
0 xxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
1 xxx xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So I basically want to read in the chunk up from 0-1, do my processing on it, then move on to the chunk between 1 and 2.
So far I've tried using a regex to match the number and then keep iterating, but I'm sure there has to be a better way of going about this. Any suggestion/info would be greatly appreciated.
If they are all within the same line, that is there are no line breaks between "1." and "2." then you can iterate over the lines of the file like this:
for line in open("myfile.txt"):
#do stuff
The line will be disposed of and overwritten at each iteration meaning you can handle large file sizes with ease. If they're not on the same line:
for line in open("myfile.txt"):
if #regex to match start of new string
parsed_line = line
else:
parsed_line += line
and the rest of your code.
Why don't you just read the file char by char using file.read(1)?
Then, you could - in each iteration - check whether you arrived at the char 1. Then you have to make sure that storing the string is fast.
If the "N " can only start a line, then why not use use the "simple" solution? (It sounds like this already being done, I am trying to reinforce/support it ;-))
That is, just reading a line at a time, and build up the data representing the current N object. After say N=0, and N=1 are loaded, process them together, then move onto the next pair (N=2, N=3). The only thing that is even remotely tricky is making sure not to throw out a read line. (The line read that determined the end condition -- e.g. "N " -- also contain the data for the next N).
Unless seeking is required (or IO caching is disabled or there is an absurd amount of data per item), there is really no reason not to use readline AFAIK.
Happy coding.
Here is some off-the-cuff code, which likely contains multiple errors. In any case, it shows the general idea using a minimized side-effect approach.
# given an input and previous item data, return either
# [item_number, data, next_overflow] if another item is read
# or None if there are no more items
def read_item (inp, overflow):
data = overflow or ""
# this can be replaced with any method to "read the header"
# the regex is just "the easiest". the contract is just:
# given "N ....", return N. given anything else, return None
def get_num(d):
m = re.match(r"(\d+) ", d)
return int(m.groups(1)) if m else None
for line in inp:
if data and get_num(line) ne None:
# already in an item (have data); current line "overflows".
# item number is still at start of current data
return [get_num(data), data, line]
# not in item, or new item not found yet
data += line
# and end of input, with data. only returns above
# if a "new" item was encountered; this covers case of
# no more items (or no items at all)
if data:
return [get_num(data), data, None]
else
return None
And usage might be akin to the following, where f represents an open file:
# check for error conditions (e.g. None returned)
# note feed-through of "overflow"
num1, data1, overflow = read_item(f, None)
num2, data2, overflow = read_item(f, overflow)
If the format is fixed, why not just read 3 lines at a time with readline()
If the file is small, you could read the whole file in and split() on number digits (might want to use strip() to get rid of whitespace and newlines), then fold over the list to process each string in the list. You'll probably have to check that the resultant string you are processing on is not initially empty in case two digits were next to each other.
If the file's content can be loaded in memory, and that's what you answered, then the following code (needs to have filename defined) may be a solution.
import re
regx = re.compile('^((\d+).*?)(?=^\d|\Z)',re.DOTALL|re.MULTILINE)
with open(filename) as f:
text = f.read()
def treat(inp,regx=regx):
m1 = regx.search(inp)
numb,chunk = m1.group(2,1)
li = [chunk]
for mat in regx.finditer(inp,m1.end()):
n,ch = mat.group(2,1)
if int(n) == int(numb) + 1:
yield ''.join(li)
numb = n
li = []
li.append(ch)
chunk = ch
yield ''.join(li)
for y in treat(text):
print repr(y)
This code, run on a file containing :
1 mountain
orange 2
apple
produce
2 gas
solemn
enlightment
protectorate
3 grimace
song
4 snow
wheat
51 guludururu
kelemekinonoto
52asabi dabada
5 yellow
6 pink
music
air
7 guitar
blank 8
8 Canada
9 Rimini
produces:
'1 mountain\norange 2\napple\nproduce\n'
'2 gas\nsolemn\nenlightment\nprotectorate\n'
'3 grimace\nsong\n'
'4 snow\nwheat\n51 guludururu\nkelemekinonoto\n52asabi dabada\n'
'5 yellow\n'
'6 pink \nmusic\nair\n'
'7 guitar\nblank 8\n'
'8 Canada\n'
'9 Rimini'

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