Python is Reading My .txt File Incorrectly

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March 7th, 2013, 12:32 AM

CastorTroy

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Python is Reading My .txt File Incorrectly

I have a file in a .txt format with just a bunch of words, in a list like layout. When I open and read the file in python, it gives me all the margins, columns and format as the words. Like this:

word is {\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1187\cocoasubrtf340
word is {\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;}
word is {\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
word is \margl1440\margr1440\vieww10800\viewh8400\viewkind0
word is \pard\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\pardirnatur al
word is

it will also read out the words that are actually in the list with a "\" right after.

I've tried .rtf and .doc also. The .rtf does the same thing and it won't even open the .doc file format.

Any clues?
Any help will be much appreciated,,,thanks

March 7th, 2013, 01:52 AM

partoj

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Quote:

Originally Posted by CastorTroy

Please post sample input data, your python code, and expected output data. With your explanation above it's impossible to help. Also state your operating system and python version.

March 7th, 2013, 11:03 AM

CastorTroy

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Quote:

Originally Posted by partoj

Please post sample input data, your python code, and expected output data. With your explanation above it's impossible to help. Also state your operating system and python version.

I'm using OS X ML and version 3.3. The code I wrote has a lot of flaws and needs to be completely redone. But I have a .txt file with over 100,000 words that I pulled off the internet so debugging takes a long time. That is why I created my own .txt file with about twenty words in it.

Maybe you can point me in the right direction. I'm trying to take a list of words and find the pairs that are exactly the same spelled backwards and put them into a list of its own. I tried using recursion, but that does not work unless I am doing something wrong.

Any ideas?

I'm kind of new to this and teaching myself through books and online tutorials so the simpler the better for now.

Thanks

March 7th, 2013, 11:51 AM

dwblas

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Quote:

I've tried .rtf and .doc also. The .rtf does the same thing and it won't even open the .doc file format.

You have to save it as a text file. The crap you are getting when you read the file (color, font, etc.) is formatting info for the type of file it is. A text file does not have any of this. Something like the following will create a text output file that can be used for testing, as long as you don't view and (auto)save it from something else. Note that you will still have to strip() the newline

Code:

words_list = ["cat", "dog", "horse", "goat", "parrot"]

with open("./test_words.txt", "w") as output:
    for word in words_list:
        output.write("%s\n" % (word))

Last edited by dwblas : March 7th, 2013 at 12:05 PM.

March 7th, 2013, 11:51 AM

Marbelous

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You still need to post your input file or we can't tell you much. Obviously it's not just text since the output contains formating data. Whatever Mac text editor you're using to create the file must be adding it. Is there a simple "Notepad" style text editor for Mac you can try?

March 7th, 2013, 04:31 PM

b49P23TIvg

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If you can make a list of the words,

Code:

def palindrome(a):
    return list(a)==list(reversed(a))

set((a for a in words if palindrome(a)))

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Python is Reading My .txt File Incorrectly

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