Develop Reference

How do I remove the "\n" characters when reading my file but deleting one variable then replacing it

I am trying to make a program that reads from a file and deletes one specific line inside of it and then puts all the data stored back to the file separated with a new line. The file uses this format:
Jones|20|20|00
bob|30|19|90
James|40|19|80
So I want to delete (backup contains this and is the line I want to delete)
bob|30|19|90
but the code that I am using takes away the new line and doesnt replace it but when I try to add \n to it the file doesn't want to read as it does this (adds 2 "\n"s):
Jones|20|20|00
James|40|19|80
I am using this code below:
def deleteccsaver(backup):
lockaccount =""
lockaccount = lockaccount.strip("\n")
with open('accounts_project.txt','r+') as f:
newline=[]
for line in f.readlines():
newline.append(line.replace(backup, lockaccount).strip("\n"))
with open('accounts_project.txt','w+') as f:
for line in newline:
f.writelines(line +"\n")
f.close()
resetlogin()
Please help as I dont know how to add the \n back without it appearing as "\n\n"
Without the "\n "it appears as:
Jones|20|20|00James|40|19|80
Any suggestions:

What I am doing here is reading the entire file at once, please don't do this if you have a very very big file. After reading all file contents at once, I am making a list out of it using "\n" as a delimiter. Read about split function in python to know more about it. Then from the list I am replacing the backup with lockaccount, as you have been doing the same, these are the names of variables that you are using, hope I did not confuse between them in this case. Then it will be saved to a new file after adding new line after each element of list, i.e. each line of the previous file. This will cause the result file to have all the contents as previous file, but removing what you wanted to remove. I see that lockaccount is itself an empty string, so adding it might create a newline in your file. In case you dont want lockaccount to replace the backup variable in the file, just remove the backup from the list using contents.remove(backup) instead of contents[contents.index(backup)] == lockaccount keeping the rest of the code same. Hope this explains better.
def deleteccsaver(backup):
lockaccount =""
lockaccount = lockaccount.strip("\n")
with open('accounts_project.txt','r+') as f:
contents = f.read().split("\n")
if backup in contents:
contents[contents.index(backup)] = lockaccount
new_contents = "\n".join(contents)
with open('accounts_project.txt','w+') as f:
f.write(new_contents)
resetlogin()

You are priting a newline character after each element in the list. So, if you replace a line with the empty string, well, you will get an empty line.
Try to simply skip over the line you want to delete:
if line == backup:
contiune
else:
lines.append(...)
PS. There is room for improvment in the code above, but I'm on the phone, I will get back with an edit later if nobody gets ahead of me

You can try to add newline = '\n'.join(newline) after your first for loop and then just write it into the accounts_project.txt file without a loop.
The code should then look like:
def deleteccsaver(backup):
lockaccount =""
lockaccount = lockaccount.strip("\n")
with open('accounts_project.txt','r+') as f:
newline=[]
for line in f.readlines():
newline.append(line.replace(backup, lockaccount).strip("\n"))
newline = '\n'.join(newline)
with open('accounts_project.txt','w+') as f:
f.write(newline)
f.close() # you don't necessarily need it inside a with statement
resetlogin()
Edit:
Above code still results in
Jones|20|20|00
James|40|19|80
as output.
That's because during the replacement loop an empty string will be appended to newline (like newline: ['Jones|20|20|00','','James|40|19|80']) and newline = '\n'.join(newline) will then result in 'Jones|20|20|00\n\nJames|40|19|80'.
A possible fix can be to replace:
for line in f.readlines():
newline.append(line.replace(backup, lockaccount).strip("\n"))
with
for line in f.readlines():
line = line.strip('\n')
if line != backup:
newline.append(line)

def deleteccsaver(backup):
lockaccount =""
lockaccount = lockaccount.strip("\n")
with open('accounts_project.txt','r+') as f:
contents = f.read().split("\n")
if backup in contents:
contents.remove(backup)
new_contents = "\n".join(contents)
with open('accounts_project.txt','w+') as f:
f.write(new_contents)
resetlogin()

How to take items in a list, and print them to a new .txt document on separate lines

okay, this may have been talked about before, but I am unable to find it anywhere on stack so here i am.
Basically I am writing a script that will take a .txt document and store every other line (even lines say) and print them into a new text document.
I was able to successfully write my code to scan the text and remove the even numbered lines and put them into a list as independent variables but when i got to add each item of the list to the new text documents, depending on where i do that i get either the first line or the last line but never more than one.
here is what i have
f = open('stuffs.txt', 'r')
i = 1
x = []
for line in f.readlines():
if i % 2 == 0:
x.append(line)
i += 1
I have tested that this successfully takes the proper lines and stores them in list x
i have tried
for m in x:
t = open('stuffs2.txt','w')
t.write(m)
directly after, and it only prints the last line
if i do
for line in f.readlines():
if i % 2 == 0:
t = open('stuffs2.txt','w')
t.write(line)
i += 1
it will print the first line
if i try to add the first solution to the for loop as a nested for loop it will also print the first line. I have no idea why it is not taking each individual item and putting it in the .txt
when i print the list it is in there as it should be.

Did look for a canonical - did not find one...
open('stuffs2.txt','w') - "w" == kill whats there and open new empty file ...
Read the documentation: reading-and-writing-files :
7.2. Reading and Writing Files
open() returns a file object, and is most commonly used with two arguments: open(filename, mode). f = open('workfile', 'w')
The first argument is a string containing the filename.
The second argument is another string
containing a few characters describing the way in which the file will
be used.
mode can be 'r' when the file will only be read, 'w' for only
writing (an existing file with the same name will be erased), and 'a'
opens the file for appending; any data written to the file is
automatically added to the end. 'r+' opens the file for both reading
and writing. The mode argument is optional; 'r' will be assumed if
it’s omitted.
To write every 2nd line more economically:
with open("file.txt") as f, open("target.txt","w") as t:
write = True
for line in f:
if write:
t.write(line)
write = not write
this way you do not need to store all lines in memory.
The with open(...) as name : syntax is also better - it will close your filehandle (which you do not do) even if exceptions arise.

Writing variables to new line of txt file in python

From other posts, I've learned that '\n' signifies a new line when adding to a txt file. I'm trying to do just this, but I can't figure out the right syntax when an attribute is right before the new line.
My code I'm trying is like this:
for item in list:
with open("file.txt", "w") as att_file:
att_file.write(variable\n)
As you can probably see, I'm trying to add the variable for each item in the list to a new line in a txt file. What's the correct way to do this?

You just need to specify the newline character as a string:
Eg:
with open("file.txt", "w") as att_file:
for item in list:
att_file.write(attribute + "\n")

try this:
att_file.write(attribute+"\n")
note :attribute must be some variable and must be string type
your code will look like this:
with open("file.txt", "w") as att_file:
for item in list:
att_file.write(item+"\n")
with should be before for, else every time you are opening file with write mode, it will omit the
previous write

file7 = open('test_list7_file.txt','a')
file7.write(var7 + '\n')
will work fine, BUT IF YOU APPEND TO EXISTING txt file the MOUSE CURSOR
needs to be ONE SPACE AFTER THE LAST ENTRY when you save the file for use in your program.
~no space and it joins the last entry,
~on the next line already when you create you file to be added to, it adds an empty line first

Write strings to another file

The Problem - Update:
I could get the script to print out but had a hard time trying to figure out a way to put the stdout into a file instead of on a screen. the below script worked on printing results to the screen. I posted the solution right after this code, scroll to the [ solution ] at the bottom.
First post:
I'm using Python 2.7.3. I am trying to extract the last words of a text file after the colon (:) and write them into another txt file. So far I am able to print the results on the screen and it works perfectly, but when I try to write the results to a new file it gives me str has no attribute write/writeline. Here it the code snippet:
# the txt file I'm trying to extract last words from and write strings into a file
#Hello:there:buddy
#How:areyou:doing
#I:amFine:thanks
#thats:good:I:guess
x = raw_input("Enter the full path + file name + file extension you wish to use: ")
def ripple(x):
with open(x) as file:
for line in file:
for word in line.split():
if ':' in word:
try:
print word.split(':')[-1]
except (IndexError):
pass
ripple(x)
The code above works perfectly when printing to the screen. However I have spent hours reading Python's documentation and can't seem to find a way to have the results written to a file. I know how to open a file and write to it with writeline, readline, etc, but it doesn't seem to work with strings.
Any suggestions on how to achieve this?
PS: I didn't add the code that caused the write error, because I figured this would be easier to look at.
End of First Post
The Solution - Update:
Managed to get python to extract and save it into another file with the code below.
The Code:
inputFile = open ('c:/folder/Thefile.txt', 'r')
outputFile = open ('c:/folder/ExtractedFile.txt', 'w')
tempStore = outputFile
for line in inputFile:
for word in line.split():
if ':' in word:
splitting = word.split(':')[-1]
tempStore.writelines(splitting +'\n')
print splitting
inputFile.close()
outputFile.close()
Update:
checkout droogans code over mine, it was more efficient.

Try this:
with open('workfile', 'w') as f:
f.write(word.split(':')[-1] + '\n')
If you really want to use the print method, you can:
from __future__ import print_function
print("hi there", file=f)
according to Correct way to write line to file in Python. You should add the __future__ import if you are using python 2, if you are using python 3 it's already there.

I think your question is good, and when you're done, you should head over to code review and get your code looked at for other things I've noticed:
# the txt file I'm trying to extract last words from and write strings into a file
#Hello:there:buddy
#How:areyou:doing
#I:amFine:thanks
#thats:good:I:guess
First off, thanks for putting example file contents at the top of your question.
x = raw_input("Enter the full path + file name + file extension you wish to use: ")
I don't think this part is neccessary. You can just create a better parameter for ripple than x. I think file_loc is a pretty standard one.
def ripple(x):
with open(x) as file:
With open, you are able to mark the operation happening to the file. I also like to name my file object according to its job. In other words, with open(file_loc, 'r') as r: reminds me that r.foo is going to be my file that is being read from.
for line in file:
for word in line.split():
if ':' in word:
First off, your for word in line.split() statement does nothing but put the "Hello:there:buddy" string into a list: ["Hello:there:buddy"]. A better idea would be to pass split an argument, which does more or less what you're trying to do here. For example, "Hello:there:buddy".split(":") would output ['Hello', 'there', 'buddy'], making your search for colons an accomplished task.
try:
print word.split(':')[-1]
except (IndexError):
pass
Another advantage is that you won't need to check for an IndexError, since you'll have, at least, an empty string, which when split, comes back as an empty string. In other words, it'll write nothing for that line.
ripple(x)
For ripple(x), you would instead call ripple('/home/user/sometext.txt').
So, try looking over this, and explore code review. There's a guy named Winston who does really awesome work with Python and self-described newbies. I always pick up new tricks from that guy.
Here is my take on it, re-written out:
import os #for renaming the output file
def ripple(file_loc='/typical/location/while/developing.txt'):
outfile = "output.".join(os.path.basename(file_loc).split('.'))
with open(outfile, 'w') as w:
lines = open(file_loc, 'r').readlines() #everything is one giant list
w.write('\n'.join([line.split(':')[-1] for line in lines]))
ripple()
Try breaking this down, line by line, and changing things around. It's pretty condensed, but once you pick up comprehensions and using lists, it'll be more natural to read code this way.

You are trying to call .write() on a string object.
You either got your arguments mixed up (you'll need to call fileobject.write(yourdata), not yourdata.write(fileobject)) or you accidentally re-used the same variable for both your open destination file object and storing a string.

f.read coming up empty

I'm doing all this in the interpreter..
loc1 = '/council/council1'
file1 = open(loc1, 'r')
at this point i can do file1.read() and it prints the file's contents as a string to standard output
but if i add this..
string1 = file1.read()
string 1 comes back empty.. i have no idea what i could be doing wrong. this seems like the most basic thing!
if I go on to type file1.read() again, the output to standard output is just an empty string. so, somehow i am losing my file when i try to create a string with file1.read()

You can only read a file once. After that, the current read-position is at the end of the file.
If you add file1.seek(0) before you re-read it, you should be able to read the contents again. A better approach, however, is to read into a string the first time and then keep it in memory:
loc1 = '/council/council1'
file1 = open(loc1, 'r')
string1 = file1.read()
print string1

You do not lose it, you just move offset pointer to the end of file and try to read some more data. Since it is the end of the file, no more data is available and you get empty string. Try reopening file or seeking to zero position:
f.read()
f.seek(0)
f.read()

Using with is the best syntax to use because it closes the connection to the file after using it(since python 2.5):
with open('/council/council1', 'r') as input_file:
text = input_file.read()
print(text)

To quote the official documentation on read():
To read a file’s contents, call f.read(size)
When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents of the file will
be read and returned;
And the most relevant part:
If the end of the file has been reached, f.read() will return an empty
string ('').
Which means that if you use read() twice consecutively, it is expected that the second time you'll get an empty string. Either store it the first time or use f.seek(0) to go back to the start. Together, they provide a lower level API to give you greater control.
Besides using a context manager to automatically open and close the file, there's another way to read a whole text file, using pathlib, example below:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
from pathlib import Path
txt_file = Path("myfile.txt")
try:
content = txt_file.read_text()
except FileNotFoundError:
print("Could not find file")
else:
print(f"The content is: {content}")
print(f"I can also read again: {txt_file.read_text()}")
As you can see, you can call read_text() several times and you'll get the full content, no surprises. Of course you wouldn't want to do that in production code since read_text() opens and closes the file each time, it's still best to store it. I could recommend pathlib highly when dealing with files and file paths.
It's outside the scope, but it may be worth noting a difference when reading line by line. Unlike the file object obtained by open(), PosixPath returned by Path() is not iterable. The equivalent of:
with open('file.txt') as f:
for line in f:
print(line)
Would be something like:
for line in Path('file.txt').read_text().split('\n'):
print(line)
One advantage of the first approach, with open, is that the entire file is not read into memory at once.

make sure your location is correct. Do you actually have a directory called /council under your root directory (/) ?. also use, os.path.join() to create your path
loc1 = os.path.join("/path","dir1","dir2")