Filtering Data in a Text File with Python

Question

I'm new to Python (like Zygote new), and it's just to supplement another program but what I need is I have a text file that's a group of items for a game and it is formatted so:

[1]
Name=Blah
Faction=Blahdiddly
Cost=1000

[2]
Name=Meh
Faction=MehMeh
Cost=2000

[3]
Name=Lollypop
Faction=Blahdiddly
Cost=100

And I need to be able to find out what groups (the numbers in brackets) have matching values.

So if I search Faction=Blahdiddly Group 1 & 3 will come up.

I unfortunately have NO idea how to do this.

Can anyone help?

Do you have any control over the file format used? If you just want to load data and share it between progs, XML may be for you. If you want to do searching and sorting, you might want to start looking at a database like SQlite instead. — Hugh Bothwell
– Hugh Bothwell, Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 6:36

kindall · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-26 00:08:33Z

5

As Senthil indicates, ConfigParser is what you really want to read such a file. However, it doesn't provide an easy way to filter things the way you want. You can do it (get a list of the sections, see if the key is in each section, and if so, whether it has the desired value, and if so, record the section), but something like this might be more straightforward.

datafile = open("datafile.txt")

section = None
found   = []

match   = set(["Faction=Blahdiddly"])  # can be multiple items

for line in datafile:
    line = line.strip()
    if line.startswith("[") and line.endswith("]"):
        section = line.strip("[]")
    elif line in match:
        found.append(section)

print found

edited Feb 26, 2011 at 0:08

answered Jan 14, 2011 at 5:25

kindall

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2 Comments

Gnu Engineer Over a year ago

then you do this "elif line in [match1,match2,match3]:"

kindall Over a year ago

... or a set, which is even better.

Senthil Kumaran · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-14 05:16:57Z

1

Have you looked at ConfigParser module? The text file you describe seems to be something which ConfigParser can recognize out of box. Here is an example to get you started.

answered Jan 14, 2011 at 5:16

Senthil Kumaran

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