Develop Reference

Parsing numbers in strings from a file

I have a txt file as here:
pid,party,state,res
SC5,Republican,NY,Donald Trump 45%-Marco Rubio 18%-John Kasich 18%-Ted Cruz 11%
TB1,Republican,AR,Ted Cruz 27%-Marco Rubio 23%-Donald Trump 23%-Ben Carson 11%
FX2,Democratic,MI,Hillary Clinton 61%-Bernie Sanders 34%
BN1,Democratic,FL,Hillary Clinton 61%-Bernie Sanders 30%
PB2,Democratic,OH,Hillary Clinton 56%-Bernie Sanders 35%
what I want to do, is check that the % of each "res" gets to 100%
def addPoll(pid,party,state,res,filetype):
with open('Polls.txt', 'a+') as file: # open file temporarly for writing and reading
lines = file.readlines() # get all lines from file
file.seek(0)
next(file) # go to next line --
#this is suppose to skip the 1st line with pid/pary/state/res
for line in lines: # loop
line = line.split(',', 3)[3]
y = line.split()
print y
#else:
#file.write(pid + "," + party + "," + state + "," + res+"\n")
#file.close()
return "pass"
print addPoll("123","Democratic","OH","bla bla 50%-Asd ASD 50%",'f')
So in my code I manage to split the last ',' and enter it into a list, but im not sure how I can get only the numbers out of that text.

You can use regex to find all the numbers:
import re
for line in lines:
numbers = re.findall(r'\d+', line)
numbers = [int(n) for n in numbers]
print(sum(numbers))
This will print
0 # no numbers in the first line
97
85
97
92
93
The re.findall() method finds all substrings matching the specified pattern, which in this case is \d+, meaning any continuous string of digits. This returns a list of strings, which we cast to a list of ints, then take the sum.

It seems like what you have is CSV. Instead of trying to parse that on your own, Python already has a builtin parser that will give you back nice dictionaries (so you can do line['res']):
import csv
with open('Polls.txt') as f:
reader = csv.DictReader(f)
for row in reader:
# Do something with row['res']
pass
For the # Do something part, you can either parse the field manually (it appears to be structured): split('-') and then rsplit(' ', 1) each - separated part (the last thing should be the percent). If you're trying to enforce a format, then I'd definitely go this route, but regex are also a fine solution too for quickly pulling out what you want. You'll want to read up on them, but in your case, you want \d+%:
# Manually parse (throws IndexError if there isn't a space separating candidate name and %)
percents = [candidate.rsplit(' ', 1)[1] for candidate row['res'].split('-')]
if not all(p.endswith('%') for p in percents):
# Handle bad percent (not ending in %)
pass
else:
# Throws ValueError if any of the percents aren't integers
percents = [int(p[:-1]) for p in percents]
if sum(percents) != 100:
# Handle bad total
pass
Or with regex:
percents = [int(match.group(1)) for match in re.finditer(r'(\d+)%', row['res'])]
if sum(percents) != 100:
# Handle bad total here
pass
Regex is certainly shorter, but the former will enforce more strict formatting requirements on row['res'] and will allow you to later extract things like candidate names.
Also some random notes:
You don't need to open with 'a+' unless you plan to append to the file, 'r' will do (and 'r' is implicit, so you don't have to specify it).
Instead of next() use a for loop!

run a search over the items of a list, and save each search into a file

I have a data.dat file that has 3 columns: The 3rd column is just the numbers 1 to 6 repeated again and again:
( In reality, column 3 has numbers from 1 to 1917, but for a minimal working example, let's stick to 1 to 6 )
# Title
127.26 134.85 1
127.26 135.76 2
127.26 135.76 3
127.26 160.97 4
127.26 160.97 5
127.26 201.49 6
125.88 132.67 1
125.88 140.07 2
125.88 140.07 3
125.88 165.05 4
125.88 165.05 5
125.88 203.06 6
137.20 140.97 1
137.20 140.97 2
137.20 148.21 3
137.20 155.37 4
137.20 155.37 5
137.20 184.07 6
I would like to:
1) extract the lines that contain 1 in the 3rd column and save them to a file called mode_1.dat.
2) extract the lines that contain 2 in the 3rd column and save them to a file called mode_2.dat.
3) extract the lines that contain 3 in the 3rd column and save them to a file called mode_3.dat.
.
.
.
6) extract the lines that contain 6 in the 3rd column and save them to a file called mode_6.dat.
In order to accomplish this, I have:
a) defined a variable factor = 6
a) created a one_to_factor list that has numbers 1 to 6
b) The re.search statement is in charge of extracting the lines for each value of one_to_factor. %s are the i inside the one_to_factor list
c) append these results to an empty LINES list.
However, this does not work. I cannot manage to extract the lines that contain i in the 3rd column and save them to a file called mode_i.dat
I would appreciate if you could help me.
factor = 6
one_to_factor = range(1,factor+1)
LINES = []
f_2 = open('data.dat', 'r')
for line in f_2:
for i in one_to_factor:
if re.search(r' \b%s$' %i , line):
print 'line = ', line
LINES.append(line)
print 'LINES =' , LINES

I would do it like this:
no regexes, just use str.split() to split according to whitespace
use last item (the digit) of the current line to generate the filename
use a dictionary to open the file the first time, and reuse the handle for subsequent matches (write title line at file open)
close all handles in the end
code:
title_line="# Vol \t Freq \t Mod \n"
handles = dict()
next(f_2) # skip title
for line in f_2:
toks = line.split()
filename = "mode_{}.dat".format(toks[-1])
# create files first time id encountered
if filename in handles:
pass
else:
handles[filename] = open(filename,"w")
handles[filename].write(title_line) # write title
handles[filename].write(line)
# close all files
for v in handles.values():
v.close()
EDIT: that's the fastest way but the problem is if you have too many suffixes (like in your real example), you'll get "too many open files" exception. So for this case, there's a slightly less efficient method but which works too:
import glob,os
# pre-processing: cleanup old files if any
for f in glob.glob("mode_*.dat"):
os.remove(f)
next(f_2) # skip title
s = set()
title_line="# Vol \t Freq \t Mod \n"
for line in f_2:
toks = line.split()
filename = "mode_{}.dat".format(toks[-1])
with open(filename,"a") as f:
if filename in s:
pass
else:
s.add(filename)
f.write(title_line)
f.write(line)
It basically opens as append mode, writes the lines, and closes the file.
(the set is used to detect first write in this file, so title can be written before the data)
There's a directory cleanup first to ensure that no data is left from a previous computation (append mode expects that no file exists, and if input data set changes, there's a possibility that there's an indentifier not present in the new dataset, so there would be an "orphan" file remaining from previous run)

First, instead of looping on you one_to_factor, you can get the index in one step :
index = line[-1] # Last character on the line
Then, you can check if index is in your one_to_factor list.
You should created a dictionary of lists to store your lines.
Something like :
{ "1" : [line1, line7, ...],
"2" : ....
}
And then you can use the key of the dictionnary to create the file and populate it with lines.

Regex remove certain characters from a file

I'd like to write a python script that reads a text file containing this:
FRAME
1 J=1,8 SEC=CL1 NSEG=2 ANG=0
2 J=8,15 SEC=CL2 NSEG=2 ANG=0
3 J=15,22 SEC=CL3 NSEG=2 ANG=0
And output a text file that looks like this:
1 1 8
2 8 15
3 15 22
I essentially don't need the commas or the SEC, NSEG and ANG data. Could someone help me use regex to do this?
So far I have this:
import re
r = re.compile(r"\s*(\d+)\s+J=(\S+)\s+SEC=(\S+)\s+NSEG=(\S+)+ANG=(\S+)\s")
with open('RawDataFile_445.txt') as a:
# open all 4 files with a meaningful name
file=[open(outputfile.txt","w")
for line in a:

Without regex:
for line in file:
keep = []
line = line.strip()
if line.startswith('FRAME'):
continue
first, second, *_ = line.split()
keep.append(first)
first, second = second.split('=')
keep.extend(second.split(','))
print(' '.join(keep))

My advice? Since I don't write many regex's I avoid writing big ones all at once. Since you've already done that I would try to verify it a small chunk at a time, as illustrated in this code.
import re
r = re.compile(r"\s*(\d+)\s+J=(\S+)\s+SEC=(\S+)\s+NSEG=(\S+)+ANG=(\S+)\s")
r = re.compile(r"\s*(\d+)")
r = re.compile(r"\s*(\d+)\s+J=(\d+)")
with open('RawDataFile_445.txt') as a:
a.readline()
for line in a.readlines():
result = r.match(line)
if result:
print (result.groups())
The first regex is your entire brute of an expression. The next line is the first chunk I verified. The next line is the second, bigger chunk that worked. Notice the slight change.
At this point I would go back, make the correction to the original, whole regex and then copy a bigger chunk to try. And re-run.

Let's focus on an example string we want to parse:
1 J=1,8
We have space(s), digit(s), more space(s), some characters, then digit(s), a comma, and more digit(s). If we replace them with regex characters, we get (\d+)\s+J=(\d+),(\d+), where + means we want 1 or more of that type. Note that we surround the digits with parentheses so we can capture them later with .groups() or .group(#), where # is the nth group.

Rewriting code with an array

I have a file X_true that consists of sentences like these:
evid emerg interview show done deal
munich hamburg train crash wednesday first gener ice model power two electr power locomot capac 759 passeng
one report earlier week said older two boy upset girlfriend broken polic confirm
jordan previous said
Now instead of storing these sentences in a file, I wish to put them in an array(List of strings) to work with them throughout the code. So the array would look something like this:
['evid emerg interview show done deal',
'munich hamburg train crash wednesday first gener ice model power two electr power locomot capac 759 passeng',
'one report earlier week said older two boy upset girlfriend broken polic confirm',
'jordan previous said']
Earlier when working with the file, this was the code I was using:
def run(command):
output = subprocess.check_output(command, shell=True)
return output
row = run('cat '+'/Users/mink/X_true.txt'+" | wc -l").split()[0]
Now when I working with X_true as an array, how can I write an equivalent statement for the row assignment above?

len(X_true_array) ,where X_true_array is the array of ur file content represented by array.
because before then u use wc -l to get the line count of ur file,and in here u can represent the line count through the count of array item.

So I understand this correctly, you just want to read in a file and store each line as an element of an array?
X_true = []
with open("X_true.txt") as f:
for line in f:
X_true.append(line.strip())
Another option (thanks #roeland):
with open("X_true.txt") as f:
X_true = list(map(str.strip, f))

with open(X_true.txt) as f:
X_true= f.readlines()
or with stripping the newline character:
X_true= [line.rstrip('\n') for line in open(X_true.txt)]
Refer Input and Ouput:

Try this:
Using readlines
X_true = open("x_true.txt").readlines()
Using read:
X_true = open("x_true.txt").read().split("\n")
Using List comprehension:
X_true = [line.rstrip() for line in open("x_true.txt")]

with open(X_true.txt) as f:
array_of_lines = f.readlines()
array_of_lines will look like your example above. Note: it will still have the newline characters at the end of each string in the array. Those can be removed with string.strip() if they're a concern.

Bash or Python to go backwards?

I have a text file which a lot of random occurrences of the string #STRING_A, and I would be interested in writing a short script which removes only some of them. Particularly one that scans the file and once it finds a line which starts with this string like
#STRING_A
then checks if 3 lines backwards there is another occurrence of a line starting with the same string, like
#STRING_A
#STRING_A
and if it happens, to delete the occurrence 3 lines backward. I was thinking about bash, but I do not know how to "go backwards" with it. So I am sure that this is not possible with bash. I also thought about python, but then I should store all information in memory in order to go backwards and then, for long files it would be unfeasible.
What do you think? Is it possible to do it in bash or python?
Thanks

Funny that after all these hours nobody's yet given a solution to the problem as actually phrased (as #John Machin points out in a comment) -- remove just the leading marker (if followed by another such marker 3 lines down), not the whole line containing it. It's not hard, of course -- here's a tiny mod as needed of #truppo's fun solution, for example:
from itertools import izip, chain
f = "foo.txt"
for third, line in izip(chain(" ", open(f)), open(f)):
if third.startswith("#STRING_A") and line.startswith("#STRING_A"):
line = line[len("#STRING_A"):]
print line,
Of course, in real life, one would use an iterator.tee instead of reading the file twice, have this code in a function, not repeat the marker constant endlessly, &c;-).

Of course Python will work as well. Simply store the last three lines in an array and check if the first element in the array is the same as the value you are currently reading. Then delete the value and print out the current array. You would then move over your elements to make room for the new value and repeat. Of course when the array is filled you'd have to make sure to continue to move values out of the array and put in the newly read values, stopping to check each time to see if the first value in the array matches the value you are currently reading.

Here is a more fun solution, using two iterators with a three element offset :)
from itertools import izip, chain, tee
f1, f2 = tee(open("foo.txt"))
for third, line in izip(chain(" ", f1), f2):
if not (third.startswith("#STRING_A") and line.startswith("#STRING_A")):
print line,

Why shouldn't it possible in bash? You don't need to keep the whole file in memory, just the last three lines (if I understood correctly), and write what's appropriate to standard-out. Redirect that into a temporary file, check that everything worked as expected, and overwrite the source file with the temporary one.
Same goes for Python.
I'd provide a script of my own, but that wouldn't be tested. ;-)

As AlbertoPL said, store lines in a fifo for later use--don't "go backwards". For this I would definitely use python over bash+sed/awk/whatever.
I took a few moments to code this snippet up:
from collections import deque
line_fifo = deque()
for line in open("test"):
line_fifo.append(line)
if len(line_fifo) == 4:
# "look 3 lines backward"
if line_fifo[0] == line_fifo[-1] == "#STRING_A\n":
# get rid of that match
line_fifo.popleft()
else:
# print out the top of the fifo
print line_fifo.popleft(),
# don't forget to print out the fifo when the file ends
for line in line_fifo: print line,

This code will scan through the file, and remove lines starting with the marker. It only keeps only three lines in memory by default:
from collections import deque
def delete(fp, marker, gap=3):
"""Delete lines from *fp* if they with *marker* and are followed
by another line starting with *marker* *gap* lines after.
"""
buf = deque()
for line in fp:
if len(buf) < gap:
buf.append(line)
else:
old = buf.popleft()
if not (line.startswith(marker) and old.startswith(marker)):
yield old
buf.append(line)
for line in buf:
yield line
I've tested it with:
>>> from StringIO import StringIO
>>> fp = StringIO('''a
... b
... xxx 1
... c
... xxx 2
... d
... e
... xxx 3
... f
... g
... h
... xxx 4
... i''')
>>> print ''.join(delete(fp, 'xxx'))
a
b
xxx 1
c
d
e
xxx 3
f
g
h
xxx 4
i

This "answer" is for lyrae ... I'll amend my previous comment: if the needle is in the first 3 lines of the file, your script will either cause an IndexError or access a line that it shouldn't be accessing, sometimes with interesting side-effects.
Example of your script causing IndexError:
>>> lines = "#string line 0\nblah blah\n".splitlines(True)
>>> needle = "#string "
>>> for i,line in enumerate(lines):
... if line.startswith(needle) and lines[i-3].startswith(needle):
... lines[i-3] = lines[i-3].replace(needle, "")
...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 2, in <module>
IndexError: list index out of range
and this example shows not only that the Earth is round but also why your "fix" to the "don't delete the whole line" problem should have used .replace(needle, "", 1) or [len(needle):] instead of .replace(needle, "")
>>> lines = "NEEDLE x NEEDLE y\nnoddle\nnuddle\n".splitlines(True)
>>> needle = "NEEDLE"
>>> # Expected result: no change to the file
... for i,line in enumerate(lines):
... if line.startswith(needle) and lines[i-3].startswith(needle):
... lines[i-3] = lines[i-3].replace(needle, "")
...
>>> print ''.join(lines)
x y <<<=== whoops!
noddle
nuddle
<<<=== still got unwanted newline in here
>>>

My awk-fu has never been that good... but the following may provide you what you're looking for in a bash-shell/shell-utility form:
sed `awk 'BEGIN{ORS=";"}
/#STRING_A/ {
if(LAST!="" && LAST+3 >= NR) print LAST "d"
LAST = NR
}' test_file` test_file
Basically... awk is producing a command for sed to strip certain lines. I'm sure there's a relatively easy way to make awk do all of the processing, but this does seem to work.
The bad part? It does read the test_file twice.
The good part? It is a bash/shell-utility implementation.
Edit: Alex Martelli points out that the sample file above might have confused me. (my above code deletes the whole line, rather than the #STRING_A flag only)
This is easily remedied by adjusting the command to sed:
sed `awk 'BEGIN{ORS=";"}
/#STRING_A/ {
if(LAST!="" && LAST+3 >= NR) print LAST "s/#STRING_A//"
LAST = NR
}' test_file` test_file

This may be what you're looking for?
lines = open('sample.txt').readlines()
needle = "#string "
for i,line in enumerate(lines):
if line.startswith(needle) and lines[i-3].startswith(needle):
lines[i-3] = lines[i-3].replace(needle, "")
print ''.join(lines)
this outputs:
string 0 extra text
string 1 extra text
string 2 extra text
string 3 extra text
--replaced -- 4 extra text
string 5 extra text
string 6 extra text
#string 7 extra text
string 8 extra text
string 9 extra text
string 10 extra text

In bash you can use sort -r filename and tail -n filename to read the file backwards.
$LINES=`tail -n filename | sort -r`
# now iterate through the lines and do your checking

I would consider using sed. gnu sed supports definition of line ranges. if sed would fail, then there is another beast - awk and I'm sure you can do it with awk.
O.K. I feel I should put my awk POC. I could not figure out to use sed addresses. I have not tried combination of awk+sed, but it seems to me it's overkill.
my awk script works as follows:
It reads lines and stores them into 3 line buffer
once desired pattern is found (/^data.*/ in my case), the 3-line buffer is looked up to check, whether desired pattern has been seen three lines ago
if pattern has been seen, then 3 lines are scratched
to be honest, I would probably go with python also, given that awk is really awkward.
the AWK code follows:
function max(a, b)
{
if (a > b)
return a;
else
return b;
}
BEGIN {
w = 0; #write index
r = 0; #read index
buf[0, 1, 2]; #buffer
}
END {
# flush buffer
# start at read index and print out up to w index
for (k = r % 3; k r - max(r - 3, 0); k--) {
#search in 3 line history buf
if (match(buf[k % 3], /^data.*/) != 0) {
# found -> remove lines from history
# by rewriting them -> adjust write index
w -= max(r, 3);
}
}
buf[w % 3] = $0;
w++;
}
/^.*/ {
# store line into buffer, if the history
# is full, print out the oldest one.
if (w > 2) {
print buf[r % 3];
r++;
buf[w % 3] = $0;
}
else {
buf[w] = $0;
}
w++;
}