Using Zip to read a file vertically and search through the zipped list

Question

I need to read a file containing information on different lines - for example the file may contain

12345678910
abcdefghij
zyxwvutsrq

I will then need to read the code vertically, so my list would be:

(1az)(2by)

The code I have so far is

# grid is the original file that has been read and put into a list
grid2 = zip(*grid) 
for word in words :
        for charc in grid2 :
            if word in charc :
                wordsFound.append(word )

I then run then the zip(*grid) through my search function but it just returns the entire words file and not just the words it has found

Any help will be appreciated, thank you.

I've edited your question to be readable. Please - use the edited version. — Reut Sharabani, Dec 07 '15 at 21:55

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 07 '15 at 21:59

This program prints the columns of its input file:

with open('input.txt') as input_file:
    rows = input_file.readlines()
rows = zip(*[row.strip() for row in rows])
rows = [''.join(row) for row in rows]
print rows

Result, when using OP's data:

['1az', '2by', '3cx', '4dw', '5ev', '6fu', '7gt', '8hs', '9ir', '1jq']

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 08 '15 at 17:58

You don't need to call readlines or make any intermediary lists, you just need to transpose the file object, using map to remove the newlines:

with open("test.txt") as f:
    # python2 itertools.izip, itertools.imap 
    print(["".join(r) for r in zip(*map(str.rstrip,f))])

Output:

['1az', '2by', '3cx', '4dw', '5ev', '6fu', '7gt', '8hs', '9ir', '1jq']

Using Zip to read a file vertically and search through the zipped list

2 Answers2

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