parse list in python with \t

Question

I have a file, each line looks like this:

#each line is a list: 
a = ['1\t2\t3\t4\t5']
#type(a) is list
#str(a) shows as below:
["['1\\t2\\t3\\t4\\t5']"]

I want an output of only 1 2 3 4 5, how should I accomplish that? Thanks everyone.

I think I solved this one by using list(str(a)[2:-2].split('\\t')) but this seems over complicated the problem. — 1EnemyLeft
– 1EnemyLeft, Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 18:53
I'm still not clear on the actual appearance of the line in the file, or the object or data structure you want to end up with. — TigerhawkT3
– TigerhawkT3, Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 19:01
@TigerhawkT3 I'm trying to get a list eventually, then count how many 1,2,3,4,5 is there in the whole file. — 1EnemyLeft
– 1EnemyLeft, Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 21:16

Orkem · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-31 18:59:57Z

3

I agree with Bhargav Rao. Use a for loop.

for i in a:    
    i.replace('\t',' ') 
    print i

I believe it will print out the way you want. Otherwise please specify.

answered Jul 31, 2015 at 18:59

Orkem

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Martin Evans · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-31 19:45:45Z

1

If you are reading lines from a file, you can use the following approach:

with open("file.txt", "r") as f_input:
    for line in f_input:
        print line.replace("\t"," "),

If the file you are reading from is actually columns of data, then the following approach might be suitable:

import csv

with open("file.txt", "r") as f_input:
    csv_input = csv.reader(f_input, delimiter="\t")

    for cols in csv_input:
        print " ".join(cols)

cols would give you a list of columns for each row in the file, i.e. cols[0] would be the first column. You can then easily print them out with spaces as shown.

answered Jul 31, 2015 at 19:45

Martin Evans

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1 Comment

1EnemyLeft Over a year ago

Hi Martin, thanks for your reply, you are right about the delimiter, I complicated the whole thing by putting delimiter as ',' thinking that it's a csv file must be comma delimited, but in fact it is '\t' delimited, so now everything solved.

Zion · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-31 19:00:21Z

0

there are many ways of doing this. you can use a for loop or you can just join the list and replace all the \t

a = ['1\t2\t3\t4\t5']

a = "".join(a).replace("\t", "")
print(a)

answered Jul 31, 2015 at 19:00

Zion

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