Python - Separating by tabs and new lines

Question

I'm trying to read a file in Python that looks something like this:

hello\t\tsecondhello\n
this\t\tsecondthis\n
is\t\tsecondis\n
data\t\tseconddata\n

I'm only interested in the second piece of information for each line, so I'm trying to get rid of those two tabs and the new lines. I tried this:

documents = open("data.txt", "r").readlines()
for line in documents:
    splitted = line.strip().split("\t")
    print(splitted)

But this only gives me list objects that look like this:

['hello\t\tsecondhello']

I've also looked at this accepted answer but it gives me the same only that the new lines are kept as well: splitting a string based on tab in the file

EDIT: found the error, it was false formatting in the input file. still, thanks for your help, people

I don't get the same result. I'm using Python 2.7, and I get each line splitting into three fields, as I expect: lines such as ['hello', '', 'secondhello']. Can you try printing the line and the split string, one character at a time? — Prune, Jan 30 '17 at 22:21
I am using python 3.5 and .split("\t\t") will do the work, .split("\t") gives same result as Prune mentioned. — Steve Deng Zishi, Jan 30 '17 at 22:30
splitted = line.strip().split("\t")[2] gives the second value — Vaishali, Jan 30 '17 at 22:33
the code basically just converts each line into a list object. so the line looks exactly like the list object. it never seems to actually split by tab — dot, Jan 30 '17 at 22:33
@VaishaliGarg I'm getting an `index out of range` when I try to access it with [2] — dot, Jan 30 '17 at 23:07

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 30 '17 at 22:22

1

It looks like your \t are actually escaped and not actual tabs. So try

line.strip().split("\\t\\t")

answered Jan 30 '17 at 22:22

koalo

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 30 '17 at 22:35

0

This works with data you provided:

data = documents.strip().split('\n')
wanted_data = [item.split('\t')[2] for item in data if item]

answered Jan 30 '17 at 22:35

zipa

Getting this `AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'strip'`. – dot Jan 30 '17 at 22:40
If my answer was helpful, don't forget [accept](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5235/345643) it. Thanks. – zipa Jan 31 '17 at 10:41

2 Answers2