How to use the re module to join all lines in a text file, into a single, continuous string?

Question

I'm getting a little stuck here. Say I have a text file that reads:

AAAAAA BBBBBBB

SDSDDSDSD CCCC HEY

And I want Python to convert it into one, continuous string that reads:

AAAAAABBBBBBBSDSDDSDSDCCCCHEY

Only thing is, I need to use the re module. How do I go about doing that? Thanks!

I believe you can use [`re.sub`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html#re.sub) to remove all spaces and newlines. Also see: [https://stackoverflow.com/q/5658369/11981207](https://stackoverflow.com/q/5658369/11981207) — Kei, Nov 06 '19 at 01:47
I had typed the following, but was getting an empty result: `file = open('myfile.txt', 'r').read()` `oneline = re.sub('\n', '', file)` ...but to no avail. If I try to print `oneline`, the only thing that comes up is: `""` Instead, I want the whole string. — nwb37, Nov 06 '19 at 01:48
Hmmm, I tried that, too, and whenever I try to print `oneline`, I still just get `"`. :( — nwb37, Nov 06 '19 at 01:59
Try double checking that you have content in `myfile.txt`. Maybe the file hasn't been saved yet and is still blank. — Kei, Nov 06 '19 at 02:07

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 06 '19 at 01:52

1

Try stripping all whitespace characters:

inp = """AAAAAA BBBBBBB
SDSDDSDSD CCCC HEY"""
output = re.sub(r'\s+', '', inp)
print(output)

This prints:

AAAAAABBBBBBBSDSDDSDSDCCCCHEY

answered Nov 06 '19 at 01:52

Tim Biegeleisen

I kind of see what you're saying, but what if `inp` is a really big text file, and you don't want to copy-paste all of the contents of the text file? I tried doing `inp = open('myfile.txt', 'r').read()`, but that wasn't working for me. – nwb37 Nov 06 '19 at 01:56
Well if your strategy be to read each line one by one, then you could still use my answer to strip whitespace; the problem is mostly still the same. – Tim Biegeleisen Nov 06 '19 at 01:58
If I were to try that, would I have to create a for loop for each individual line? If so, how could I do that? I appreciate you being so patient with me. – nwb37 Nov 06 '19 at 02:01
What is the actual output you expect here? – Tim Biegeleisen Nov 06 '19 at 02:04

1 Answers1