Loading txt file as dictionary into python script

Question

I have a txt file (dictionary.txt) that I would like to load into my script as a dictionary. How can I do so?

file dictionary.txt

{'YAL008W': 25, 'YBR255W': 50, 'YGR164W': 37, 'YGR131W': 40, 'YNL003C': 11,
'YBR135W': 2, 'YBR160W': 6, 'YJL082W': 79, 'YJL142C': 4, 'YPL191C': 38,
 'YGL215W': 31, 'YKL074C': 33, 'YJL077C': 67, 'YKL096W-A': 22, 'YIL124W': 60,
 'YLR364C-A': 2, 'YPL039W': 58, 'YNL170W': 16, 'YGL141W': 62, 'YJL179W': 15,
 'YDR316W-A': 13, 'YDR316W-B': 139, 'YKL083W': 25, 'YOR009W': 25,
 'YKL029C': 395, 'YPL166W': 31, 'YKL052C': 20, 'YOL034W': 29, 'YBL008W': 42,
 'YIL062C': 2, 'YCL023C': 27}

Code:

f=open('dictionary.txt', 'r') 

with f as dic1:
     dictionary1=eval(dic1.read())

This inputs it as a dictionary, but I was wondering if there is a faster way to do so.

Please submit some code that shows us you tried to do something at least — Seekheart, Feb 23 '16 at 23:41
is this data in a known format? For example, is it supposed to be valid JSON? How was the data created? — Bryan Oakley, Feb 23 '16 at 23:45
Possible duplicate of [Converting a String to Dictionary?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/988228/converting-a-string-to-dictionary) — Jasper, Feb 23 '16 at 23:47
I created the data myself. The keys are gene names and values are integer count of reads that mapped to the gene. I created an empty dictionary, saved all gene names into keys and then had a for loop run through and add appropriate number of times a read was mapped to the gene. The dictionary was saved as a .txt file with sys.stdout @BryanOakley — user5927494, Feb 23 '16 at 23:47
Side-note: It's extraordinarily weird and partially defeating the purpose of using `with` statements to separate the `open` line from the `with`. You'd almost always combine them into `with open('dictionary.txt') as dic1:` (I omitted the `'r'` since that's the default mode anyway). — ShadowRanger, Feb 23 '16 at 23:49
That data is not split up like you have it now, that's only for posting purpose, correct? — Leb, Feb 23 '16 at 23:59

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 23 '16 at 23:47

It's unlikely to be faster, or slower, but you can make it much more secure by avoiding eval (which can execute arbitrary code, which makes for a major security and stability risk) in favor of ast.literal_eval; it's like eval, but only for Python literals, not arbitrary code. Depending on format, you might also be able to use json.load or json.loads.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 24 '16 at 01:10

Your dictionary.txt is almost JSON, so I would recommend something like this:

import json
with open('dictionary.txt') as data_file:
    data = data_file.read()
# Convert single quotes to double quotes to get JSON syntax
data = data.replace('\'', '"')
data = json.loads(data)
for key, val in data.iteritems():
    print "%s = %s" % (key, val)

For your dictionary.txt, this outputs

YOL034W = 29
YAL008W = 25
...
YKL052C = 20

NOTE: Ellipses have been used to abbreviate the output.

Loading txt file as dictionary into python script

2 Answers2