for loop inside else stetment - delete employee manually from a file

Question

in the function im trying to search for a specific person in a file if the preson is in not the file ill give a print . if its in the file ill create a new file without the person . for some reseon it doesn't get inside the for loop after the else statement i dont know why..please help
the file f is like this :

employee_id: 305078495
Name: hadar
phone: 0525676380
age: 27
employee_id: 305078487
Name: shir
phone: 0525676340

age: 27

def delete_employee_manually():
    employee_id1 = raw_input("Enter the ID number to delete")
    name1 = raw_input("Enter employee name to delete")
    phone1 = raw_input("Enter phone to delete")
    age1 = raw_input("Enter age to delete")
    delete_list = [str(employee_id1) , str(name1) ,str(phone1)  , str(age1)]

    f=open(r'D:\Employee.txt',"r") 
    output=open(r'D:\Employee_after_delete.txt',"w+")

    if name1 not in f.read():
       print name1, "is not on the Employee list"
    else:
        for line in f:
            if not any(delete_list in line for delete_list in delete_list):
                output.write(line)
                print name1, "as been deleted from the Employee list!"

The problem is that `f.read()` reads in the entire file, all the way to the end. Then the for-loop under the `else` finds nothing to read, and terminates immediately. Store the lines in a list so you can scan them twice. — alexis, Dec 09 '18 at 09:14
PS. Why are you learning with Python 2? Switch to Python 3 now. — alexis, Dec 09 '18 at 09:17

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 09 '18 at 09:17

You are trying to use the same file handler twice. Files should only be read once.

f = open('somefile.txt','r')
print 'a' in f.read()  #checking this membership condition consumes the handler #prints True if a is in the file
print f.read()  #handler at end of file. prints ''
print 'a' in f.read() #prints false now.

You should read and store the file contents instead in a variable. As a good habit, use the with context manager to read files.

with open('somefile.txt', 'r') as f:
    content = f.read()

print 'a' in content #assuming this prints True
print 'a' in content #prints true again

for loop inside else stetment - delete employee manually from a file

1 Answers1