Iterating over full text lines instead of characters

Question

I noticed when I try to iterate over a file with lines such as "python" "please" "work" I only get individual characters back, such as, "p" "y" "t"...

how could I get it to give me the full word? I've been trying a couple hours and can't find a method. I'm using the newest version of python. Edit: All the quotation marks are new lines.

I got infuriated and deleted what I had, essentially thought I had the code for the function I was trying to write, I tried storing each element as a substring, then appending it to the list I was trying to make but it didn't work. I'm sorry for not posting an effort though. — Stacks of overflow, Nov 13 '12 at 04:19

Lester Cheung · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-13T04:52:14.387

3

You can iterate over a file object:

for line in open('file'):
    for word in line.split():
        do_stuff(word)

See the docs for the details: http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#bltin-file-objects

edited Nov 13 '12 at 04:52

answered Nov 13 '12 at 03:55

Lester Cheung

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I edited my post to show what is actually happening. I know how to iterate over the characters of a line in the file, I just want the whole line itself though. – Stacks of overflow Nov 13 '12 at 04:21
...and i have updated my answer to match. ;-) – Lester Cheung Nov 13 '12 at 04:52
Is there any forum etiquette in dealing with a completed post? – Stacks of overflow Nov 13 '12 at 19:31

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 13 '12 at 03:44

1

If you are storing the words as a string, you can split the words by space using split function.

>>> "python please work".split(' ')
['python', 'please', 'work']

answered Nov 13 '12 at 03:44

user1787687

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I was thinking that, but the words are on different lines. Essentially I want it to go to each line and take all the information as one string when I'm iterating, not as characters. – Stacks of overflow Nov 13 '12 at 04:22
Can you copy and paste two or three lines of your code? It would be helpful. – user1787687 Nov 13 '12 at 05:14

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 13 '12 at 04:30

If you have your data in a single string which spans several lines (e.g. it contains '\n' characters), you will need to split it before iterating. This is because iterating over a string (rather than a list of strings) will always iterate over characters, rather than words or lines.

Here's some example code:

text = "Spam, spam, spam.\Lovely spam!\nWonderful spam!"

lines = text.splitlines() # or use .split("\n") to do it manually

for line in lines:
     do_whatever(line)

Iterating over full text lines instead of characters

3 Answers3