I am working with a very large (~11GB) text file on a Linux system. I am running it through a program which is checking the file for errors. Once an error is found, I need to either fix the line or remove the line entirely. And then repeat...
Eventually once I'm comfortable with the process, I'll automate it entirely. For now however, let's assume I'm running this by hand.
What would be the fastest (in terms of execution time) way to remove a specific line from this large file? I thought of doing it in Python...but would be open to other examples. The line might be anywhere in the file.
If Python, assume the following interface:
def removeLine(filename, lineno):
Thanks,
-aj
You can have two file objects for the same file at the same time (one for reading, one for writing):
def removeLine(filename, lineno):
fro = open(filename, "rb")
current_line = 0
while current_line < lineno:
fro.readline()
current_line += 1
seekpoint = fro.tell()
frw = open(filename, "r+b")
frw.seek(seekpoint, 0)
# read the line we want to discard
fro.readline()
# now move the rest of the lines in the file
# one line back
chars = fro.readline()
while chars:
frw.writelines(chars)
chars = fro.readline()
fro.close()
frw.truncate()
frw.close()
Modify the file in place, offending line is replaced with spaces so the remainder of the file does not need to be shuffled around on disk. You can also "fix" the line in place if the fix is not longer than the line you are replacing
import os
from mmap import mmap
def removeLine(filename, lineno):
f=os.open(filename, os.O_RDWR)
m=mmap(f,0)
p=0
for i in range(lineno-1):
p=m.find('\n',p)+1
q=m.find('\n',p)
m[p:q] = ' '*(q-p)
os.close(f)
If the other program can be changed to output the fileoffset instead of the line number, you can assign the offset to p directly and do without the for loop
As far as I know, you can't just open a txt file with python and remove a line. You have to make a new file and move everything but that line to it. If you know the specific line, then you would do something like this:
f = open('in.txt')
fo = open('out.txt','w')
ind = 1
for line in f:
if ind != linenumtoremove:
fo.write(line)
ind += 1
f.close()
fo.close()
You could of course check the contents of the line instead to determine if you want to keep it or not. I also recommend that if you have a whole list of lines to be removed/changed to do all those changes in one pass through the file.
If the lines are variable length then I don't believe that there is a better algorithm than reading the file line by line and writing out all lines, except for the one(s) that you do not want.
You can identify these lines by checking some criteria, or by keeping a running tally of lines read and suppressing the writing of the line(s) that you do not want.
If the lines are fixed length and you want to delete specific line numbers, then you may be able to use seek to move the file pointer... I doubt you're that lucky though.
Update: solution using sed as requested by poster in comment.
To delete for example the second line of file:
sed '2d' input.txt
Use the -i switch to edit in place. Warning: this is a destructive operation. Read the help for this command for information on how to make a backup automatically.
def removeLine(filename, lineno):
in = open(filename)
out = open(filename + ".new", "w")
for i, l in enumerate(in, 1):
if i != lineno:
out.write(l)
in.close()
out.close()
os.rename(filename + ".new", filename)
I think there was a somewhat similar if not exactly the same type of question asked here. Reading (and writing) line by line is slow, but you can read a bigger chunk into memory at once, go through that line by line skipping lines you don't want, then writing this as a single chunk to a new file. Repeat until done. Finally replace the original file with the new file.
The thing to watch out for is when you read in a chunk, you need to deal with the last, potentially partial line you read, and prepend that into the next chunk you read.
#OP, if you can use awk, eg assuming line number is 10
$ awk 'NR!=10' file > newfile
I will provide two alternatives based on the look-up factor (line number or a search string):
Line number
def removeLine2(filename, lineNumber):
with open(filename, 'r+') as outputFile:
with open(filename, 'r') as inputFile:
currentLineNumber = 0
while currentLineNumber < lineNumber:
inputFile.readline()
currentLineNumber += 1
seekPosition = inputFile.tell()
outputFile.seek(seekPosition, 0)
inputFile.readline()
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
while currentLine:
outputFile.writelines(currentLine)
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
outputFile.truncate()
String
def removeLine(filename, key):
with open(filename, 'r+') as outputFile:
with open(filename, 'r') as inputFile:
seekPosition = 0
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
while not currentLine.strip().startswith('"%s"' % key):
seekPosition = inputFile.tell()
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
outputFile.seek(seekPosition, 0)
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
while currentLine:
outputFile.writelines(currentLine)
currentLine = inputFile.readline()
outputFile.truncate()
Related
guess you have a solution concerning the following issue:
I want to compare two lists for common entries (on the basis of column 10) and write common entries to one file and unique entries for the first list into another file. The code I wrote is:
INFILE1 = open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962.filtered.csv", "r")
INFILE2 = open ("c:\\python\\test\\83887.filtered.csv", "r")
OUTFILE1 = open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962_vs_83887.common.csv", "w")
OUTFILE2 = open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962_vs_83887.unique.csv", "w")
for line in INFILE1:
line = line.rstrip().split(",")
if line[11] in INFILE2:
OUTFILE1.write(line)
else:
OUTFILE2.write(line)
INFILE1.close()
INFILE2.close()
OUTFILE1.close()
OUTFILE2.close()
The following error appears:
8 OUTFILE1.write(line)
9 else:
---> 10 OUTFILE2.write(line)
11 INFILE1.close()
TypeError: write() argument must be str, not list
Does somebody know about help for this?
Best
This line
line = line.rstrip().split(",")
replaces the line you read from a file by it's splitted list. You then try to write the splitted list to your file - thats not how the write method works and it tells you exactly that.
Change it to :
for line in INFILE1:
lineList = line.rstrip().split(",") # dont overwrite line, use lineList
if lineList[11] in INFILE2: # used lineList
OUTFILE1.write(line) # corrected indentation
else:
OUTFILE2.write(line)
You could have easily found your error yourself, just printing out the line before and after splitting or just befrore writing.
Please read How to debug small programs (#1) and follow it - its easier to find and fix bugs yourself then posting questions here.
You have some other problem at hand, though:
Files are stream based, they start with a position of 0 in the file. The position is advanced if you access parts of the file. When at the end, you wont get anything by using INFILE2.read() or other methods.
So if you want to repeatadly check if some lines column of file1 is somewhere in file2 you need to read file2 into a list (or other datastructure) so your repeated checks work. In other words, this:
if lineList[11] in INFILE2:
might work once, then the file is consumed and it will return false all the time.
You also might want to change from:
f = open(...., ...)
# do something with f
f.close()
to
with open(name,"r") as f:
# do something with f, no close needed, closed when leaving block
as it is safer, will close the file even if exceptions happen.
To solve that try this (untested) code:
with open ("c:\\python\\test\\83887.filtered.csv", "r") as file2:
infile2 = file2.readlines() # read in all lines as list
with open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962.filtered.csv", "r") as INFILE1:
# next 2 lines are 1 line, \ at end signifies line continues
with open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962_vs_83887.common.csv", "w") as OUTFILE1, \
with open ("c:\\python\\test\\58962_vs_83887.unique.csv", "w") as OUTFILE2:
for line in INFILE1:
lineList = line.rstrip().split(",")
if any(lineList[11] in x for x in infile2): # check the list of lines if
# any contains line[11]
OUTFILE1.write(line)
else:
OUTFILE2.write(line)
# all files are autoclosed here
Links to read:
the-with-statement
any() and other built-ins
Is there a way to do this? Say I have a file that's a list of names that goes like this:
Alfred
Bill
Donald
How could I insert the third name, "Charlie", at line x (in this case 3), and automatically send all others down one line? I've seen other questions like this, but they didn't get helpful answers. Can it be done, preferably with either a method or a loop?
This is a way of doing the trick.
with open("path_to_file", "r") as f:
contents = f.readlines()
contents.insert(index, value)
with open("path_to_file", "w") as f:
contents = "".join(contents)
f.write(contents)
index and value are the line and value of your choice, lines starting from 0.
If you want to search a file for a substring and add a new text to the next line, one of the elegant ways to do it is the following:
import os, fileinput
old = "A"
new = "B"
for line in fileinput.FileInput(file_path, inplace=True):
if old in line :
line += new + os.linesep
print(line, end="")
There is a combination of techniques which I found useful in solving this issue:
with open(file, 'r+') as fd:
contents = fd.readlines()
contents.insert(index, new_string) # new_string should end in a newline
fd.seek(0) # readlines consumes the iterator, so we need to start over
fd.writelines(contents) # No need to truncate as we are increasing filesize
In our particular application, we wanted to add it after a certain string:
with open(file, 'r+') as fd:
contents = fd.readlines()
if match_string in contents[-1]: # Handle last line to prevent IndexError
contents.append(insert_string)
else:
for index, line in enumerate(contents):
if match_string in line and insert_string not in contents[index + 1]:
contents.insert(index + 1, insert_string)
break
fd.seek(0)
fd.writelines(contents)
If you want it to insert the string after every instance of the match, instead of just the first, remove the else: (and properly unindent) and the break.
Note also that the and insert_string not in contents[index + 1]: prevents it from adding more than one copy after the match_string, so it's safe to run repeatedly.
You can just read the data into a list and insert the new record where you want.
names = []
with open('names.txt', 'r+') as fd:
for line in fd:
names.append(line.split(' ')[-1].strip())
names.insert(2, "Charlie") # element 2 will be 3. in your list
fd.seek(0)
fd.truncate()
for i in xrange(len(names)):
fd.write("%d. %s\n" %(i + 1, names[i]))
The accepted answer has to load the whole file into memory, which doesn't work nicely for large files. The following solution writes the file contents with the new data inserted into the right line to a temporary file in the same directory (so on the same file system), only reading small chunks from the source file at a time. It then overwrites the source file with the contents of the temporary file in an efficient way (Python 3.8+).
from pathlib import Path
from shutil import copyfile
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile
sourcefile = Path("/path/to/source").resolve()
insert_lineno = 152 # The line to insert the new data into.
insert_data = "..." # Some string to insert.
with sourcefile.open(mode="r") as source:
destination = NamedTemporaryFile(mode="w", dir=str(sourcefile.parent))
lineno = 1
while lineno < insert_lineno:
destination.file.write(source.readline())
lineno += 1
# Insert the new data.
destination.file.write(insert_data)
# Write the rest in chunks.
while True:
data = source.read(1024)
if not data:
break
destination.file.write(data)
# Finish writing data.
destination.flush()
# Overwrite the original file's contents with that of the temporary file.
# This uses a memory-optimised copy operation starting from Python 3.8.
copyfile(destination.name, str(sourcefile))
# Delete the temporary file.
destination.close()
EDIT 2020-09-08: I just found an answer on Code Review that does something similar to above with more explanation - it might be useful to some.
You don't show us what the output should look like, so one possible interpretation is that you want this as the output:
Alfred
Bill
Charlie
Donald
(Insert Charlie, then add 1 to all subsequent lines.) Here's one possible solution:
def insert_line(input_stream, pos, new_name, output_stream):
inserted = False
for line in input_stream:
number, name = parse_line(line)
if number == pos:
print >> output_stream, format_line(number, new_name)
inserted = True
print >> output_stream, format_line(number if not inserted else (number + 1), name)
def parse_line(line):
number_str, name = line.strip().split()
return (get_number(number_str), name)
def get_number(number_str):
return int(number_str.split('.')[0])
def format_line(number, name):
return add_dot(number) + ' ' + name
def add_dot(number):
return str(number) + '.'
input_stream = open('input.txt', 'r')
output_stream = open('output.txt', 'w')
insert_line(input_stream, 3, 'Charlie', output_stream)
input_stream.close()
output_stream.close()
Parse the file into a python list using file.readlines() or file.read().split('\n')
Identify the position where you have to insert a new line, according to your criteria.
Insert a new list element there using list.insert().
Write the result to the file.
location_of_line = 0
with open(filename, 'r') as file_you_want_to_read:
#readlines in file and put in a list
contents = file_you_want_to_read.readlines()
#find location of what line you want to insert after
for index, line in enumerate(contents):
if line.startswith('whatever you are looking for')
location_of_line = index
#now you have a list of every line in that file
context.insert(location_of_line, "whatever you want to append to middle of file")
with open(filename, 'w') as file_to_write_to:
file_to_write_to.writelines(contents)
That is how I ended up getting whatever data I want to insert to the middle of the file.
this is just pseudo code, as I was having a hard time finding clear understanding of what is going on.
essentially you read in the file to its entirety and add it into a list, then you insert your lines that you want to that list, and then re-write to the same file.
i am sure there are better ways to do this, may not be efficient, but it makes more sense to me at least, I hope it makes sense to someone else.
A simple but not efficient way is to read the whole content, change it and then rewrite it:
line_index = 3
lines = None
with open('file.txt', 'r') as file_handler:
lines = file_handler.readlines()
lines.insert(line_index, 'Charlie')
with open('file.txt', 'w') as file_handler:
file_handler.writelines(lines)
I write this in order to reutilize/correct martincho's answer (accepted one)
! IMPORTANT: This code loads all the file into ram and rewrites content to the file
Variables index, value may be what you desire, but pay attention to making value string and end with '\n' if you don't want it to mess with existing data.
with open("path_to_file", "r+") as f:
# Read the content into a variable
contents = f.readlines()
contents.insert(index, value)
# Reset the reader's location (in bytes)
f.seek(0)
# Rewrite the content to the file
f.writelines(contents)
See the python docs about file.seek method: Python docs
Below is a slightly awkward solution for the special case in which you are creating the original file yourself and happen to know the insertion location (e.g. you know ahead of time that you will need to insert a line with an additional name before the third line, but won't know the name until after you've fetched and written the rest of the names). Reading, storing and then re-writing the entire contents of the file as described in other answers is, I think, more elegant than this option, but may be undesirable for large files.
You can leave a buffer of invisible null characters ('\0') at the insertion location to be overwritten later:
num_names = 1_000_000 # Enough data to make storing in a list unideal
max_len = 20 # The maximum allowed length of the inserted line
line_to_insert = 2 # The third line is at index 2 (0-based indexing)
with open(filename, 'w+') as file:
for i in range(line_to_insert):
name = get_name(i) # Returns 'Alfred' for i = 0, etc.
file.write(F'{i + 1}. {name}\n')
insert_position = file.tell() # Position to jump back to for insertion
file.write('\0' * max_len + '\n') # Buffer will show up as a blank line
for i in range(line_to_insert, num_names):
name = get_name(i)
file.write(F'{i + 2}. {name}\n') # Line numbering now bumped up by 1.
# Later, once you have the name to insert...
with open(filename, 'r+') as file: # Must use 'r+' to write to middle of file
file.seek(insert_position) # Move stream to the insertion line
name = get_bonus_name() # This lucky winner jumps up to 3rd place
new_line = F'{line_to_insert + 1}. {name}'
file.write(new_line[:max_len]) # Slice so you don't overwrite next line
Unfortunately there is no way to delete-without-replacement any excess null characters that did not get overwritten (or in general any characters anywhere in the middle of a file), unless you then re-write everything that follows. But the null characters will not affect how your file looks to a human (they have zero width).
Is there a way to do this? Say I have a file that's a list of names that goes like this:
Alfred
Bill
Donald
How could I insert the third name, "Charlie", at line x (in this case 3), and automatically send all others down one line? I've seen other questions like this, but they didn't get helpful answers. Can it be done, preferably with either a method or a loop?
This is a way of doing the trick.
with open("path_to_file", "r") as f:
contents = f.readlines()
contents.insert(index, value)
with open("path_to_file", "w") as f:
contents = "".join(contents)
f.write(contents)
index and value are the line and value of your choice, lines starting from 0.
If you want to search a file for a substring and add a new text to the next line, one of the elegant ways to do it is the following:
import os, fileinput
old = "A"
new = "B"
for line in fileinput.FileInput(file_path, inplace=True):
if old in line :
line += new + os.linesep
print(line, end="")
There is a combination of techniques which I found useful in solving this issue:
with open(file, 'r+') as fd:
contents = fd.readlines()
contents.insert(index, new_string) # new_string should end in a newline
fd.seek(0) # readlines consumes the iterator, so we need to start over
fd.writelines(contents) # No need to truncate as we are increasing filesize
In our particular application, we wanted to add it after a certain string:
with open(file, 'r+') as fd:
contents = fd.readlines()
if match_string in contents[-1]: # Handle last line to prevent IndexError
contents.append(insert_string)
else:
for index, line in enumerate(contents):
if match_string in line and insert_string not in contents[index + 1]:
contents.insert(index + 1, insert_string)
break
fd.seek(0)
fd.writelines(contents)
If you want it to insert the string after every instance of the match, instead of just the first, remove the else: (and properly unindent) and the break.
Note also that the and insert_string not in contents[index + 1]: prevents it from adding more than one copy after the match_string, so it's safe to run repeatedly.
You can just read the data into a list and insert the new record where you want.
names = []
with open('names.txt', 'r+') as fd:
for line in fd:
names.append(line.split(' ')[-1].strip())
names.insert(2, "Charlie") # element 2 will be 3. in your list
fd.seek(0)
fd.truncate()
for i in xrange(len(names)):
fd.write("%d. %s\n" %(i + 1, names[i]))
The accepted answer has to load the whole file into memory, which doesn't work nicely for large files. The following solution writes the file contents with the new data inserted into the right line to a temporary file in the same directory (so on the same file system), only reading small chunks from the source file at a time. It then overwrites the source file with the contents of the temporary file in an efficient way (Python 3.8+).
from pathlib import Path
from shutil import copyfile
from tempfile import NamedTemporaryFile
sourcefile = Path("/path/to/source").resolve()
insert_lineno = 152 # The line to insert the new data into.
insert_data = "..." # Some string to insert.
with sourcefile.open(mode="r") as source:
destination = NamedTemporaryFile(mode="w", dir=str(sourcefile.parent))
lineno = 1
while lineno < insert_lineno:
destination.file.write(source.readline())
lineno += 1
# Insert the new data.
destination.file.write(insert_data)
# Write the rest in chunks.
while True:
data = source.read(1024)
if not data:
break
destination.file.write(data)
# Finish writing data.
destination.flush()
# Overwrite the original file's contents with that of the temporary file.
# This uses a memory-optimised copy operation starting from Python 3.8.
copyfile(destination.name, str(sourcefile))
# Delete the temporary file.
destination.close()
EDIT 2020-09-08: I just found an answer on Code Review that does something similar to above with more explanation - it might be useful to some.
You don't show us what the output should look like, so one possible interpretation is that you want this as the output:
Alfred
Bill
Charlie
Donald
(Insert Charlie, then add 1 to all subsequent lines.) Here's one possible solution:
def insert_line(input_stream, pos, new_name, output_stream):
inserted = False
for line in input_stream:
number, name = parse_line(line)
if number == pos:
print >> output_stream, format_line(number, new_name)
inserted = True
print >> output_stream, format_line(number if not inserted else (number + 1), name)
def parse_line(line):
number_str, name = line.strip().split()
return (get_number(number_str), name)
def get_number(number_str):
return int(number_str.split('.')[0])
def format_line(number, name):
return add_dot(number) + ' ' + name
def add_dot(number):
return str(number) + '.'
input_stream = open('input.txt', 'r')
output_stream = open('output.txt', 'w')
insert_line(input_stream, 3, 'Charlie', output_stream)
input_stream.close()
output_stream.close()
Parse the file into a python list using file.readlines() or file.read().split('\n')
Identify the position where you have to insert a new line, according to your criteria.
Insert a new list element there using list.insert().
Write the result to the file.
location_of_line = 0
with open(filename, 'r') as file_you_want_to_read:
#readlines in file and put in a list
contents = file_you_want_to_read.readlines()
#find location of what line you want to insert after
for index, line in enumerate(contents):
if line.startswith('whatever you are looking for')
location_of_line = index
#now you have a list of every line in that file
context.insert(location_of_line, "whatever you want to append to middle of file")
with open(filename, 'w') as file_to_write_to:
file_to_write_to.writelines(contents)
That is how I ended up getting whatever data I want to insert to the middle of the file.
this is just pseudo code, as I was having a hard time finding clear understanding of what is going on.
essentially you read in the file to its entirety and add it into a list, then you insert your lines that you want to that list, and then re-write to the same file.
i am sure there are better ways to do this, may not be efficient, but it makes more sense to me at least, I hope it makes sense to someone else.
A simple but not efficient way is to read the whole content, change it and then rewrite it:
line_index = 3
lines = None
with open('file.txt', 'r') as file_handler:
lines = file_handler.readlines()
lines.insert(line_index, 'Charlie')
with open('file.txt', 'w') as file_handler:
file_handler.writelines(lines)
I write this in order to reutilize/correct martincho's answer (accepted one)
! IMPORTANT: This code loads all the file into ram and rewrites content to the file
Variables index, value may be what you desire, but pay attention to making value string and end with '\n' if you don't want it to mess with existing data.
with open("path_to_file", "r+") as f:
# Read the content into a variable
contents = f.readlines()
contents.insert(index, value)
# Reset the reader's location (in bytes)
f.seek(0)
# Rewrite the content to the file
f.writelines(contents)
See the python docs about file.seek method: Python docs
Below is a slightly awkward solution for the special case in which you are creating the original file yourself and happen to know the insertion location (e.g. you know ahead of time that you will need to insert a line with an additional name before the third line, but won't know the name until after you've fetched and written the rest of the names). Reading, storing and then re-writing the entire contents of the file as described in other answers is, I think, more elegant than this option, but may be undesirable for large files.
You can leave a buffer of invisible null characters ('\0') at the insertion location to be overwritten later:
num_names = 1_000_000 # Enough data to make storing in a list unideal
max_len = 20 # The maximum allowed length of the inserted line
line_to_insert = 2 # The third line is at index 2 (0-based indexing)
with open(filename, 'w+') as file:
for i in range(line_to_insert):
name = get_name(i) # Returns 'Alfred' for i = 0, etc.
file.write(F'{i + 1}. {name}\n')
insert_position = file.tell() # Position to jump back to for insertion
file.write('\0' * max_len + '\n') # Buffer will show up as a blank line
for i in range(line_to_insert, num_names):
name = get_name(i)
file.write(F'{i + 2}. {name}\n') # Line numbering now bumped up by 1.
# Later, once you have the name to insert...
with open(filename, 'r+') as file: # Must use 'r+' to write to middle of file
file.seek(insert_position) # Move stream to the insertion line
name = get_bonus_name() # This lucky winner jumps up to 3rd place
new_line = F'{line_to_insert + 1}. {name}'
file.write(new_line[:max_len]) # Slice so you don't overwrite next line
Unfortunately there is no way to delete-without-replacement any excess null characters that did not get overwritten (or in general any characters anywhere in the middle of a file), unless you then re-write everything that follows. But the null characters will not affect how your file looks to a human (they have zero width).
I want to remove a line in a file; currently I'm creating a new file, copying every line except the one I want to remove, deleting the old file and renaming the new one as the same filename as the old one. Is there a better way to remove a line?
f = open('./todo.txt', 'r')
newF = open('./todo-run.txt', 'a')
lines = f.readlines()
cLine = lines[int(index) - 1]
for line in lines:
if line != cLine:
newF.write(line)
f.close()
newF.close()
os.remove('./todo.txt')
shutil.move('./todo-run.txt', './todo.txt')
A solution in sed, which you might call using "subprocess". Ex, to delete line 18 do:
sed -i '18 d' filename
Better in what way? You could, for instance, shuffle the data within the file then truncate it, using less memory but more seeking (particularly if you adapt it to not read the latter part in one chunk):
def cutfile(file, startcut, endcut):
file.seek(endcut)
dataafter=file.read()
file.seek(startcut)
file.write(dataafter)
file.truncate()
Or you could not remove the old file before renaming, to get atomic updates. It really depends on your goals.
It's not much better than yours, but (since your file seems to fit in main memory) you might try this:
f = open(filepath, 'r')
lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f if not <CONDITION>]
f.close()
f.open('filepath, 'w')
f.write('\n'.join(lines))
f.close()
You could move the lines after the unwanted line up by overwriting one at a time. Not much better than what you're currently doing though. This code acts a little funny if the file doesn't end with a newline. I tested it on Win7 64-bit, Python 2.7.
move_lines.py:
f = open('todo.txt', 'r+')
line_index = 0
prev_line_head = 0
remove_line_index = 3
move_lines = False
while True:
line_head = f.tell()
line = f.readline()
if line == '': #EOF
f.seek(prev_line_head)
f.truncate()
break
if move_lines:
f.seek(prev_line_head)
f.write(line)
f.flush()
line_head = f.tell()
line = f.readline() # read past the line we already read to start this iteration
elif line_index == remove_line_index:
move_lines = True
prev_line_head = line_head
line_index += 1
f.close()
I have 2 simple questions about python:
1.How to get number of lines of a file in python?
2.How to locate the position in a file object to the
last line easily?
lines are just data delimited by the newline char '\n'.
1) Since lines are variable length, you have to read the entire file to know where the newline chars are, so you can count how many lines:
count = 0
for line in open('myfile'):
count += 1
print count, line # it will be the last line
2) reading a chunk from the end of the file is the fastest method to find the last newline char.
def seek_newline_backwards(file_obj, eol_char='\n', buffer_size=200):
if not file_obj.tell(): return # already in beginning of file
# All lines end with \n, including the last one, so assuming we are just
# after one end of line char
file_obj.seek(-1, os.SEEK_CUR)
while file_obj.tell():
ammount = min(buffer_size, file_obj.tell())
file_obj.seek(-ammount, os.SEEK_CUR)
data = file_obj.read(ammount)
eol_pos = data.rfind(eol_char)
if eol_pos != -1:
file_obj.seek(eol_pos - len(data) + 1, os.SEEK_CUR)
break
file_obj.seek(-len(data), os.SEEK_CUR)
You can use that like this:
f = open('some_file.txt')
f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
seek_newline_backwards(f)
print f.tell(), repr(f.readline())
Let's not forget
f = open("myfile.txt")
lines = f.readlines()
numlines = len(lines)
lastline = lines[-1]
NOTE: this reads the whole file in memory as a list. Keep that in mind in the case that the file is very large.
The easiest way is simply to read the file into memory. eg:
f = open('filename.txt')
lines = f.readlines()
num_lines = len(lines)
last_line = lines[-1]
However for big files, this may use up a lot of memory, as the whole file is loaded into RAM. An alternative is to iterate through the file line by line. eg:
f = open('filename.txt')
num_lines = sum(1 for line in f)
This is more efficient, since it won't load the entire file into memory, but only look at a line at a time. If you want the last line as well, you can keep track of the lines as you iterate and get both answers by:
f = open('filename.txt')
count=0
last_line = None
for line in f:
num_lines += 1
last_line = line
print "There were %d lines. The last was: %s" % (num_lines, last_line)
One final possible improvement if you need only the last line, is to start at the end of the file, and seek backwards until you find a newline character. Here's a question which has some code doing this. If you need both the linecount as well though, theres no alternative except to iterate through all lines in the file however.
For small files that fit memory,
how about using str.count() for getting the number of lines of a file:
line_count = open("myfile.txt").read().count('\n')
I'd like too add to the other solutions that some of them (those who look for \n) will not work with files with OS 9-style line endings (\r only), and that they may contain an extra blank line at the end because lots of text editors append it for some curious reasons, so you might or might not want to add a check for it.
The only way to count lines [that I know of] is to read all lines, like this:
count = 0
for line in open("file.txt"): count = count + 1
After the loop, count will have the number of lines read.
For the first question there're already a few good ones, I'll suggest #Brian's one as the best (most pythonic, line ending character proof and memory efficient):
f = open('filename.txt')
num_lines = sum(1 for line in f)
For the second one, I like #nosklo's one, but modified to be more general should be:
import os
f = open('myfile')
to = f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
found = -1
while found == -1 and to > 0:
fro = max(0, to-1024)
f.seek(fro)
chunk = f.read(to-fro)
found = chunk.rfind("\n")
to -= 1024
if found != -1:
found += fro
It seachs in chunks of 1Kb from the end of the file, until it finds a newline character or the file ends. At the end of the code, found is the index of the last newline character.
Answer to the first question (beware of poor performance on large files when using this method):
f = open("myfile.txt").readlines()
print len(f) - 1
Answer to the second question:
f = open("myfile.txt").read()
print f.rfind("\n")
P.S. Yes I do understand that this only suits for small files and simple programs. I think I will not delete this answer however useless for real use-cases it may seem.
Answer1:
x = open("file.txt")
opens the file or we have x associated with file.txt
y = x.readlines()
returns all lines in list
length = len(y)
returns length of list to Length
Or in one line
length = len(open("file.txt").readlines())
Answer2 :
last = y[-1]
returns the last element of list
Approach:
Open the file in read-mode and assign a file object named “file”.
Assign 0 to the counter variable.
Read the content of the file using the read function and assign it to a
variable named “Content”.
Create a list of the content where the elements are split wherever they encounter an “\n”.
Traverse the list using a for loop and iterate the counter variable respectively.
Further the value now present in the variable Counter is displayed
which is the required action in this program.
Python program to count the number of lines in a text file
# Opening a file
file = open("filename","file mode")#file mode like r,w,a...
Counter = 0
# Reading from file
Content = file.read()
CoList = Content.split("\n")
for i in CoList:
if i:
Counter += 1
print("This is the number of lines in the file")
print(Counter)
The above code will print the number of lines present in a file. Replace filename with the file with extension and file mode with read - 'r'.