Cannot read data from textfile

Question

the idea is to write a python code reading data from a text file indicated below.

https://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPCORB/CometEls.txt

Further on, I would like to filter comet-data like name magnitude etc. etc.

Right now my problem is getting data output.

My code is:

import os.path

word_dict = {}

scriptpath = os.path.dirname(__file__)
filename = os.path.join(scriptpath, 'CometEls.txt','r')

for line in filename:
    line = line.strip()
    relation = line.split(' ')
    word_dict[relation[0]] = relation[0:20]


    while True:
        word = input('Comet name : ')
        if word in word_dict:
        print ('Comets in list :' , word_dict[word])
        print(filename) #show file location
    else:
        print( 'No comet data!')
        print(word_dict) #show data from dictionary

As you can see data in my dictionary isn't the comet-data.

It should be

Typing in "a"

Theoretically the code works, the problem is creating the dictionary?

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it doesn't work neither with tuples or lists, or it's better to copy data into a .csv file?

Best regards

do `print(line)` in the for loop, you'll understand, you don't read the file, you're iterating on the filename string — azro, May 15 '20 at 21:08

Mikhail Sidorov · Answer 1 · 2020-05-15T21:46:21.147

0

You saved the file path to the filename variable, but did not open the file for reading. You should open file, and then read it:

import os.path

word_dict = {}

scriptpath = os.path.dirname(__file__)
file_path = os.path.join(scriptpath, 'CometEls.txt')

with open(file_path, 'r') as commet_file:
    for line in commet_file:
        line = line.strip()
        relation = line.split(' ')
        word_dict[relation[0]] = relation[0:20]

while True:
    word = input('Comet name : ')
    if word in word_dict:
        print ('Comets in list :' , word_dict[word])
        print(file_path) 
    else:
        print('No comet data!')
        print(word_dict) #show data from dictionary

Also, your example has wrong margins near in while block, please check it.

edited May 15 '20 at 21:46

answered May 15 '20 at 21:12

Mikhail Sidorov

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Thanx for your reply. I'll check it – Robert May 15 '20 at 21:17
Do you want to print the file path on that line? `print(filename)`? If you want to print file content, you shoud read it using readlines method and save it in a variable before. – Mikhail Sidorov May 15 '20 at 21:24
No I put print(filename) in the code to get a output of the file location in IDLE, as well as print(word_dict) showing dictionary content – Robert May 15 '20 at 21:39
Ok, it should work as you expect. – Mikhail Sidorov May 15 '20 at 21:45

Cannot read data from textfile

1 Answers1