how to read and manipulate a dictionary and file python 2.7

Question

i have a file that looks like so: {"Apples": 14, "Bananas": 14, "Pineapples": 0, "Pears": 8}

im trying to figure out how i can read this file in and be able to use it so that i can for example reduce the "apples" value to lower i.e 13 from 14

That looks like JSON, so you should use the `json` module. – PM 2Ring May 01 '18 at 17:40 — PM 2Ring, May 01 '18 at 17:40

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered May 01 '18 at 17:41

0

Assuming its just a text file:

You can just read the file and create a dictionary using literal_eval()

from ast import literal_eval
with open("file.txt") as f:
    a = f.read()
    dic= literal_eval(a)

At this point you can just modify anything in the dict:

dic["apples"] = 13

To write it back to file you can just convert it back to a string and write:

w = str(dic)

with open("file.txt", "w+") as f:
    f.write(w)

answered May 01 '18 at 17:41

Primusa

1 Answers1