How do I separate a each text file line into a separate lists?

Question

say i have a text file which contains the following:

Bob 15 M
John 16 M
Jen 15 F

How do I put it into a list so that the list values are:

listOne = ['Bob', '15', 'M']
listTwo = ['John', '16', 'M']
listThree = ['Jen', '15', 'F']

Thanks

Possible duplicate of [Split string into a list in Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/743806/split-string-into-a-list-in-python) — Mohammed Aouf Zouag, Feb 19 '16 at 11:52

danidee · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-19T12:14:00.490

4

just split it and unpack it

bob, john, jen = [a.split() for a in open(file)]

edited Feb 19 '16 at 12:14

answered Feb 19 '16 at 11:56

danidee

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very good point. though it would be garbage collected and closed but we cant always depend on the interpreter to do that – danidee Feb 19 '16 at 12:10
In CPython, it would usually be immediately garbage-collected; in other Python implementation, it might stay around for a while. – Sven Marnach Feb 19 '16 at 12:33

JRazor · Answer 2 · 2016-02-19T12:35:04.387

0

Use open file and split():

with open('text.txt') as f:
    strings = f.readlines()
    data = [string.split() for string in strings]

edited Feb 19 '16 at 12:35

answered Feb 19 '16 at 11:53

JRazor

2,707
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27

1

No need for strings. Just iterate over the file object. – Sven Marnach Feb 19 '16 at 12:09

Peter Wood · Answer 3 · 2016-02-19T14:01:25.887

You can apply string.split to each line in the file:

import string

with open('text.txt') as text:
    result = map(string.split, text)

With Python 3, you need to materialise the map, otherwise the file doesn't get read before it's closed:

    result = list(map(string.split, text))

However, string.split is deprecated and would only apply to str objects, not unicode. A more general solution is to create a list comprehension:

    result = [line.split() for line in text]

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 19 '16 at 12:07

with open('text.txt') as file:
    lines = file.readlines()        # Creates a list of lines
    for line in lines:
        line = line.split()         # Split each line into list of "words"

This gives you a nested list which is probably sensible. If you desperately want 3 lists, use this:

evalvar = ""
count = 0
for line in lines:
    count += 1
    evalvar += "list"+str(count)+" = "+str(line)+";"
exec(evalvar)                                         # Runs the evalvar which has
                                                      # code in it.

How do I separate a each text file line into a separate lists?

4 Answers4