Related
Let's say I have a text file full of nicknames. How can I delete a specific nickname from this file, using Python?
First, open the file and get all your lines from the file. Then reopen the file in write mode and write your lines back, except for the line you want to delete:
with open("yourfile.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
with open("yourfile.txt", "w") as f:
for line in lines:
if line.strip("\n") != "nickname_to_delete":
f.write(line)
You need to strip("\n") the newline character in the comparison because if your file doesn't end with a newline character the very last line won't either.
Solution to this problem with only a single open:
with open("target.txt", "r+") as f:
d = f.readlines()
f.seek(0)
for i in d:
if i != "line you want to remove...":
f.write(i)
f.truncate()
This solution opens the file in r/w mode ("r+") and makes use of seek to reset the f-pointer then truncate to remove everything after the last write.
The best and fastest option, rather than storing everything in a list and re-opening the file to write it, is in my opinion to re-write the file elsewhere.
with open("yourfile.txt", "r") as file_input:
with open("newfile.txt", "w") as output:
for line in file_input:
if line.strip("\n") != "nickname_to_delete":
output.write(line)
That's it! In one loop and one only you can do the same thing. It will be much faster.
This is a "fork" from #Lother's answer (which I believe that should be considered the right answer).
For a file like this:
$ cat file.txt
1: october rust
2: november rain
3: december snow
This fork from Lother's solution works fine:
#!/usr/bin/python3.4
with open("file.txt","r+") as f:
new_f = f.readlines()
f.seek(0)
for line in new_f:
if "snow" not in line:
f.write(line)
f.truncate()
Improvements:
with open, which discard the usage of f.close()
more clearer if/else for evaluating if string is not present in the current line
The issue with reading lines in first pass and making changes (deleting specific lines) in the second pass is that if you file sizes are huge, you will run out of RAM. Instead, a better approach is to read lines, one by one, and write them into a separate file, eliminating the ones you don't need. I have run this approach with files as big as 12-50 GB, and the RAM usage remains almost constant. Only CPU cycles show processing in progress.
I liked the fileinput approach as explained in this answer:
Deleting a line from a text file (python)
Say for example I have a file which has empty lines in it and I want to remove empty lines, here's how I solved it:
import fileinput
import sys
for line_number, line in enumerate(fileinput.input('file1.txt', inplace=1)):
if len(line) > 1:
sys.stdout.write(line)
Note: The empty lines in my case had length 1
If you use Linux, you can try the following approach.
Suppose you have a text file named animal.txt:
$ cat animal.txt
dog
pig
cat
monkey
elephant
Delete the first line:
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call(['sed','-i','/.*dog.*/d','animal.txt'])
then
$ cat animal.txt
pig
cat
monkey
elephant
Probably, you already got a correct answer, but here is mine.
Instead of using a list to collect unfiltered data (what readlines() method does), I use two files. One is for hold a main data, and the second is for filtering the data when you delete a specific string. Here is a code:
main_file = open('data_base.txt').read() # your main dataBase file
filter_file = open('filter_base.txt', 'w')
filter_file.write(main_file)
filter_file.close()
main_file = open('data_base.txt', 'w')
for line in open('filter_base'):
if 'your data to delete' not in line: # remove a specific string
main_file.write(line) # put all strings back to your db except deleted
else: pass
main_file.close()
Hope you will find this useful! :)
I think if you read the file into a list, then do the you can iterate over the list to look for the nickname you want to get rid of. You can do it much efficiently without creating additional files, but you'll have to write the result back to the source file.
Here's how I might do this:
import, os, csv # and other imports you need
nicknames_to_delete = ['Nick', 'Stephen', 'Mark']
I'm assuming nicknames.csv contains data like:
Nick
Maria
James
Chris
Mario
Stephen
Isabella
Ahmed
Julia
Mark
...
Then load the file into the list:
nicknames = None
with open("nicknames.csv") as sourceFile:
nicknames = sourceFile.read().splitlines()
Next, iterate over to list to match your inputs to delete:
for nick in nicknames_to_delete:
try:
if nick in nicknames:
nicknames.pop(nicknames.index(nick))
else:
print(nick + " is not found in the file")
except ValueError:
pass
Lastly, write the result back to file:
with open("nicknames.csv", "a") as nicknamesFile:
nicknamesFile.seek(0)
nicknamesFile.truncate()
nicknamesWriter = csv.writer(nicknamesFile)
for name in nicknames:
nicknamesWriter.writeRow([str(name)])
nicknamesFile.close()
In general, you can't; you have to write the whole file again (at least from the point of change to the end).
In some specific cases you can do better than this -
if all your data elements are the same length and in no specific order, and you know the offset of the one you want to get rid of, you could copy the last item over the one to be deleted and truncate the file before the last item;
or you could just overwrite the data chunk with a 'this is bad data, skip it' value or keep a 'this item has been deleted' flag in your saved data elements such that you can mark it deleted without otherwise modifying the file.
This is probably overkill for short documents (anything under 100 KB?).
I like this method using fileinput and the 'inplace' method:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input(fname, inplace =1):
line = line.strip()
if not 'UnwantedWord' in line:
print(line)
It's a little less wordy than the other answers and is fast enough for
Save the file lines in a list, then remove of the list the line you want to delete and write the remain lines to a new file
with open("file_name.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
lines.remove("Line you want to delete\n")
with open("new_file.txt", "w") as new_f:
for line in lines:
new_f.write(line)
here's some other method to remove a/some line(s) from a file:
src_file = zzzz.txt
f = open(src_file, "r")
contents = f.readlines()
f.close()
contents.pop(idx) # remove the line item from list, by line number, starts from 0
f = open(src_file, "w")
contents = "".join(contents)
f.write(contents)
f.close()
You can use the re library
Assuming that you are able to load your full txt-file. You then define a list of unwanted nicknames and then substitute them with an empty string "".
# Delete unwanted characters
import re
# Read, then decode for py2 compat.
path_to_file = 'data/nicknames.txt'
text = open(path_to_file, 'rb').read().decode(encoding='utf-8')
# Define unwanted nicknames and substitute them
unwanted_nickname_list = ['SourDough']
text = re.sub("|".join(unwanted_nickname_list), "", text)
Do you want to remove a specific line from file so use this snippet short and simple code you can easily remove any line with sentence or prefix(Symbol).
with open("file_name.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
with open("new_file.txt", "w") as new_f:
for line in lines:
if not line.startswith("write any sentence or symbol to remove line"):
new_f.write(line)
To delete a specific line of a file by its line number:
Replace variables filename and line_to_delete with the name of your file and the line number you want to delete.
filename = 'foo.txt'
line_to_delete = 3
initial_line = 1
file_lines = {}
with open(filename) as f:
content = f.readlines()
for line in content:
file_lines[initial_line] = line.strip()
initial_line += 1
f = open(filename, "w")
for line_number, line_content in file_lines.items():
if line_number != line_to_delete:
f.write('{}\n'.format(line_content))
f.close()
print('Deleted line: {}'.format(line_to_delete))
Example output:
Deleted line: 3
Take the contents of the file, split it by newline into a tuple. Then, access your tuple's line number, join your result tuple, and overwrite to the file.
I have the following problem. I am supposed to open a CSV file (its an excel table) and read it without using any library.
I tried already a lot and have now the first row in a tuple and this in a list. But only the first line. The header. But no other row.
This is what I have so far.
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results=[]
text = file.readline()
while text != '':
for line in text.split('\n'):
a=line.split(',')
b=tuple(a)
results.append(b)
return results
The output should: be every line in a tuple and all the tuples in a list.
My question is now, how can I read the other lines in python?
I am really sorry, I am new to programming all together and so I have a real hard time finding my mistake.
Thank you very much in advance for helping me out!
This problem was many times on Stackoverflow so you should find working code.
But much better is to use module csv for this.
You have wrong indentation and you use return results after reading first line so it exits function and it never try read other lines.
But after changing this there are still other problems so it still will not read next lines.
You use readline() so you read only first line and your loop will works all time with the same line - and maybe it will never ends because you never set text = ''
You should use read() to get all text which later you split to lines using split("\n") or you could use readlines() to get all lines as list and then you don't need split(). OR you can use for line in file: In all situations you don't need while
def read_csv(path):
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results = []
text = file.read()
for line in text.split('\n'):
items = line.split(',')
results.append(tuple(items))
# after for-loop
return results
def read_csv(path):
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results = []
lines = file.readlines()
for line in lines:
line = line.rstrip('\n') # remove `\n` at the end of line
items = line.split(',')
results.append(tuple(items))
# after for-loop
return results
def read_csv(path):
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results = []
for line in file:
line = line.rstrip('\n') # remove `\n` at the end of line
items = line.split(',')
results.append(tuple(items))
# after for-loop
return results
All this version will not work correctly if you will '\n' or , inside item which shouldn't be treated as end of row or as separtor between items. These items will be in " " which also can make problem to remove them. All these problem you can resolve using standard module csv.
Your code is pretty well and you are near goal:
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results=[]
text = file.read()
#while text != '':
for line in text.split('\n'):
a=line.split(',')
b=tuple(a)
results.append(b)
return results
Your Code:
with open(path, 'r+') as file:
results=[]
text = file.readline()
while text != '':
for line in text.split('\n'):
a=line.split(',')
b=tuple(a)
results.append(b)
return results
So enjoy learning :)
One caveat is that the csv may not end with a blank line as this would result in an ugly tuple at the end of the list like ('',) (Which looks like a smiley)
To prevent this you have to check for empty lines: if line != '': after the for will do the trick.
I have a function that loops through a file that Looks like this:
"#" XDI/1.0 XDAC/1.4 Athena/0.9.25
"#" Column.4: pre_edge
Content
That is to say that after the "#" there is a comment. My function aims to read each line and if it starts with a specific word, select what is after the ":"
For example if I had These two lines. I would like to read through them and if the line starts with "#" and contains the word "Column.4" the word "pre_edge" should be stored.
An example of my current approach follows:
with open(file, "r") as f:
for line in f:
if line.startswith ('#'):
word = line.split(" Column.4:")[1]
else:
print("n")
I think my Trouble is specifically after finding a line that starts with "#" how can I parse/search through it? and save its Content if it contains the desidered word.
In case that # comment contain str Column.4: as stated above, you could parse it this way.
with open(filepath) as f:
for line in f:
if line.startswith('#'):
# Here you proceed comment lines
if 'Column.4' in line:
first, remainder = line.split('Column.4: ')
# Remainder contains everything after '# Column.4: '
# So if you want to get first word ->
word = remainder.split()[0]
else:
# Here you can proceed lines that are not comments
pass
Note
Also it is a good practice to use for line in f: statement instead of f.readlines() (as mentioned in other answers), because this way you don't load all lines into memory, but proceed them one by one.
You should start by reading the file into a list and then work through that instead:
file = 'test.txt' #<- call file whatever you want
with open(file, "r") as f:
txt = f.readlines()
for line in txt:
if line.startswith ('"#"'):
word = line.split(" Column.4: ")
try:
print(word[1])
except IndexError:
print(word)
else:
print("n")
Output:
>>> ['"#" XDI/1.0 XDAC/1.4 Athena/0.9.25\n']
>>> pre_edge
Used a try and except catch because the first line also starts with "#" and we can't split that with your current logic.
Also, as a side note, in the question you have the file with lines starting as "#" with the quotation marks so the startswith() function was altered as such.
with open('stuff.txt', 'r+') as f:
data = f.readlines()
for line in data:
words = line.split()
if words and ('#' in words[0]) and ("Column.4:" in words):
print(words[-1])
# pre_edge
Let's say I have a text file full of nicknames. How can I delete a specific nickname from this file, using Python?
First, open the file and get all your lines from the file. Then reopen the file in write mode and write your lines back, except for the line you want to delete:
with open("yourfile.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
with open("yourfile.txt", "w") as f:
for line in lines:
if line.strip("\n") != "nickname_to_delete":
f.write(line)
You need to strip("\n") the newline character in the comparison because if your file doesn't end with a newline character the very last line won't either.
Solution to this problem with only a single open:
with open("target.txt", "r+") as f:
d = f.readlines()
f.seek(0)
for i in d:
if i != "line you want to remove...":
f.write(i)
f.truncate()
This solution opens the file in r/w mode ("r+") and makes use of seek to reset the f-pointer then truncate to remove everything after the last write.
The best and fastest option, rather than storing everything in a list and re-opening the file to write it, is in my opinion to re-write the file elsewhere.
with open("yourfile.txt", "r") as file_input:
with open("newfile.txt", "w") as output:
for line in file_input:
if line.strip("\n") != "nickname_to_delete":
output.write(line)
That's it! In one loop and one only you can do the same thing. It will be much faster.
This is a "fork" from #Lother's answer (which I believe that should be considered the right answer).
For a file like this:
$ cat file.txt
1: october rust
2: november rain
3: december snow
This fork from Lother's solution works fine:
#!/usr/bin/python3.4
with open("file.txt","r+") as f:
new_f = f.readlines()
f.seek(0)
for line in new_f:
if "snow" not in line:
f.write(line)
f.truncate()
Improvements:
with open, which discard the usage of f.close()
more clearer if/else for evaluating if string is not present in the current line
The issue with reading lines in first pass and making changes (deleting specific lines) in the second pass is that if you file sizes are huge, you will run out of RAM. Instead, a better approach is to read lines, one by one, and write them into a separate file, eliminating the ones you don't need. I have run this approach with files as big as 12-50 GB, and the RAM usage remains almost constant. Only CPU cycles show processing in progress.
I liked the fileinput approach as explained in this answer:
Deleting a line from a text file (python)
Say for example I have a file which has empty lines in it and I want to remove empty lines, here's how I solved it:
import fileinput
import sys
for line_number, line in enumerate(fileinput.input('file1.txt', inplace=1)):
if len(line) > 1:
sys.stdout.write(line)
Note: The empty lines in my case had length 1
If you use Linux, you can try the following approach.
Suppose you have a text file named animal.txt:
$ cat animal.txt
dog
pig
cat
monkey
elephant
Delete the first line:
>>> import subprocess
>>> subprocess.call(['sed','-i','/.*dog.*/d','animal.txt'])
then
$ cat animal.txt
pig
cat
monkey
elephant
Probably, you already got a correct answer, but here is mine.
Instead of using a list to collect unfiltered data (what readlines() method does), I use two files. One is for hold a main data, and the second is for filtering the data when you delete a specific string. Here is a code:
main_file = open('data_base.txt').read() # your main dataBase file
filter_file = open('filter_base.txt', 'w')
filter_file.write(main_file)
filter_file.close()
main_file = open('data_base.txt', 'w')
for line in open('filter_base'):
if 'your data to delete' not in line: # remove a specific string
main_file.write(line) # put all strings back to your db except deleted
else: pass
main_file.close()
Hope you will find this useful! :)
I think if you read the file into a list, then do the you can iterate over the list to look for the nickname you want to get rid of. You can do it much efficiently without creating additional files, but you'll have to write the result back to the source file.
Here's how I might do this:
import, os, csv # and other imports you need
nicknames_to_delete = ['Nick', 'Stephen', 'Mark']
I'm assuming nicknames.csv contains data like:
Nick
Maria
James
Chris
Mario
Stephen
Isabella
Ahmed
Julia
Mark
...
Then load the file into the list:
nicknames = None
with open("nicknames.csv") as sourceFile:
nicknames = sourceFile.read().splitlines()
Next, iterate over to list to match your inputs to delete:
for nick in nicknames_to_delete:
try:
if nick in nicknames:
nicknames.pop(nicknames.index(nick))
else:
print(nick + " is not found in the file")
except ValueError:
pass
Lastly, write the result back to file:
with open("nicknames.csv", "a") as nicknamesFile:
nicknamesFile.seek(0)
nicknamesFile.truncate()
nicknamesWriter = csv.writer(nicknamesFile)
for name in nicknames:
nicknamesWriter.writeRow([str(name)])
nicknamesFile.close()
In general, you can't; you have to write the whole file again (at least from the point of change to the end).
In some specific cases you can do better than this -
if all your data elements are the same length and in no specific order, and you know the offset of the one you want to get rid of, you could copy the last item over the one to be deleted and truncate the file before the last item;
or you could just overwrite the data chunk with a 'this is bad data, skip it' value or keep a 'this item has been deleted' flag in your saved data elements such that you can mark it deleted without otherwise modifying the file.
This is probably overkill for short documents (anything under 100 KB?).
I like this method using fileinput and the 'inplace' method:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input(fname, inplace =1):
line = line.strip()
if not 'UnwantedWord' in line:
print(line)
It's a little less wordy than the other answers and is fast enough for
Save the file lines in a list, then remove of the list the line you want to delete and write the remain lines to a new file
with open("file_name.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
lines.remove("Line you want to delete\n")
with open("new_file.txt", "w") as new_f:
for line in lines:
new_f.write(line)
here's some other method to remove a/some line(s) from a file:
src_file = zzzz.txt
f = open(src_file, "r")
contents = f.readlines()
f.close()
contents.pop(idx) # remove the line item from list, by line number, starts from 0
f = open(src_file, "w")
contents = "".join(contents)
f.write(contents)
f.close()
You can use the re library
Assuming that you are able to load your full txt-file. You then define a list of unwanted nicknames and then substitute them with an empty string "".
# Delete unwanted characters
import re
# Read, then decode for py2 compat.
path_to_file = 'data/nicknames.txt'
text = open(path_to_file, 'rb').read().decode(encoding='utf-8')
# Define unwanted nicknames and substitute them
unwanted_nickname_list = ['SourDough']
text = re.sub("|".join(unwanted_nickname_list), "", text)
Do you want to remove a specific line from file so use this snippet short and simple code you can easily remove any line with sentence or prefix(Symbol).
with open("file_name.txt", "r") as f:
lines = f.readlines()
with open("new_file.txt", "w") as new_f:
for line in lines:
if not line.startswith("write any sentence or symbol to remove line"):
new_f.write(line)
To delete a specific line of a file by its line number:
Replace variables filename and line_to_delete with the name of your file and the line number you want to delete.
filename = 'foo.txt'
line_to_delete = 3
initial_line = 1
file_lines = {}
with open(filename) as f:
content = f.readlines()
for line in content:
file_lines[initial_line] = line.strip()
initial_line += 1
f = open(filename, "w")
for line_number, line_content in file_lines.items():
if line_number != line_to_delete:
f.write('{}\n'.format(line_content))
f.close()
print('Deleted line: {}'.format(line_to_delete))
Example output:
Deleted line: 3
Take the contents of the file, split it by newline into a tuple. Then, access your tuple's line number, join your result tuple, and overwrite to the file.
I'm downloading mtDNA records off NCBI and trying to extract lines from them using Python. The lines I'm trying to extract either start with or contain certain keywords such as 'haplotype' and 'nationality' or 'locality'. I've tried the following code:
import re
infile = open('sequence.txt', 'r') #open in file 'infileName' to read
outfile = open('results.txt', 'a') #open out file 'outfileName' to write
for line in infile:
if re.findall("(.*)haplogroup(.*)", line):
outfile.write(line)
outfile.write(infile.readline())
infile.close()
outfile.close()
The output here only contains the first line containing 'haplogroup' and for example not the following line from the infile:
/haplogroup="T2b20"
I've also tried the following:
keep_phrases = ["ACCESSION", "haplogroup"]
for line in infile:
for phrase in keep_phrases:
if phrase in line:
outfile.write(line)
outfile.write(infile.readline())
But this doesn't give me all of the lines containing ACCESSION and haplogroup.
line.startswith works but I can't use this for lines where the word is in the middle of the line.
Could anyone give me an example piece of code to print the following line to my output for containing 'locality':
/note="origin_locality:Wales"
Any other advice for how I can extract lines containing certain words is also appreciated.
Edit:
/haplogroup="L2a1l2a"
/note="ethnicity:Ashkenazic Jewish;
origin_locality:Poland: Warsaw; origin_coordinates:52.21 N
21.05 E"
/note="TAA stop codon is completed by the addition of 3' A
residues to the mRNA"
/note="codons recognized: UCN"
In this case, using Peter's code, the first three lines are written to the outfile but not the line containing 21.05 E". How can I make an exception for /note=" and copy all of the lines until the second set of quotation marks, without copying the /note lines containing /note="TAA or /note="codons
edit2:
This is my current solution which is working for me.
stuff_to_write = []
multiline = False
with open('sequences.txt') as f:
for line in f.readlines():
if any(phrase in line for phrase in keep_phrases) or multiline:
do_not_write = False
if multiline and line.count('"') >= 1:
multiline = False
if 'note' in line:
if any(phrase in line.split('note')[1] for phrase in remove_phrases):
do_not_write = True
elif line.count('"') < 2:
multiline = True
if not do_not_write:
stuff_to_write.append(line)
This will search a file for matching phrases and will write those lines to a new file assuming anything after "note" doesn't match anything in remove_phrases.
It will read the input line by line to check if anything matches the words in keep_phrases, store all the values in a list, then write them to a new file on separate lines. Unless you need to write the new file line by line as the matches are found, it should be a lot faster this way since everything is written at the same time.
If you don't want it to be case sensitive, change the any(phrase in line to any(phrase.lower() in line.lower().
keep_phrases = ["ACCESSION", "haplogroup", "locality"]
remove_phrases = ['codon', 'TAA']
stuff_to_write = []
with open('C:/a.txt') as f:
for line in f.readlines():
if any(phrase in line for phrase in keep_phrases):
do_not_write = False
if 'note' in line:
if any(phrase in line.split('note')[1] for phrase in remove_phrases):
do_not_write = True
if not do_not_write:
stuff_to_write.append(line)
with open('C:/b.txt','w') as f:
f.write('\r\n'.join(stuff_to_write))