How can i use python's .split with 2 delimiters

Question

While trying to solve some python exercices I found myself needing to split a string using the .split with 2 delimiters but i cant make it work. I've searched in other people's questions but the answer is always to use the re.split which i cant use because these are exerceices for class in which i can't use it.

this is my code:

f1=open("data/namesStudents.txt")
f2=open("data/namesGrades.txt")
text=f1.read().split()
text2=f2.read().split("\n")
text2

To put this in context this is an exercice in which i have to get the grades of students off a txt file(they are like this basicly :14 15 14 17\n 14 14\n\n 13 10\n 13 10 11) and then make the average of the grades of each student and add it to the other txt file.

@Aran-Fey: that's the wrong dupe, they are not splitting on multiple delimiters and have worded their question wrong. — Martijn Pieters, May 27 '18 at 16:22
@Aran-Fey: they have lines, each line needs to be split on spaces. — Martijn Pieters, May 27 '18 at 16:24
In other words, they want to split by spaces and newlines? In that case the duplicate fits, doesn't it? Edit: I see what you're saying. They want a nested list as output, huh. I have to admit, I'm not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. Edit 2: Nvm, I can see it now. Makes sense. — Aran-Fey, May 27 '18 at 16:25
@MartijnPieters How's [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7680729/how-do-you-split-a-string-to-create-nested-list) for a dupe? — Aran-Fey, May 27 '18 at 16:40
@Aran-Fey: that'd answer the direct question on how to split multiple times, yes. This *is* an X-Y problem however. — Martijn Pieters, May 27 '18 at 16:45
Related/dupe: [How to read each line from a file into list word by word in Python](//stackoverflow.com/q/27722068) — Aran-Fey, May 27 '18 at 16:53

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 27 '18 at 16:23

You want to split each line you have split out from the file. The first split produces a list of strings, then you need to call split again, on each of those strings:

values_per_line = [line.split() for line in f2.read().split('\n')]

Not that you actually need to split twice. You could just loop directly over the file:

values_per_line = [line.split() for line in f2]

Looping over a file gives you the lines in a file without having to call .read() and splitting.

How can i use python's .split with 2 delimiters

1 Answers1