how can i replace spaces and detect the empty data in a line in txt file?

Question

NAME         ADDRESS:COUNTRY              AGE                        JOB                 EMAIL
BART         RF_STREET:USA                66                         ENGINEER            BART@YAHOO
KYLE         78_STREET:AUS                                                               KYLE@GOOGLE
WILLIE       6_STREET:AUS                                                                WILLIE@GOOGLE
TRIPP        H_STREET:NZ                  55                         DOCTOR              TRIPP@YAHOO
. 
.
.

I have a txt file look like the above. I tried to replace the spaces to , and to not remove the empty data like AGE & JOB for KYLE and WILLIW; hence below is the code

input_file = open('A.txt', mode='r')
input_read=input_file.readlines()
input_file.close()

data=[]
for i in input_read:
    data.append(i.split())

My output from above code is

NAME,ADDRESS:COUNTRY,AGE,JOB,EMAIL
BART,RF_STREET:USA,66,ENGINEER,BART@YAHOO
KYLE,78_STREET:AUS,KYLE@GOOGLE
WILLIE,6_STREET:AUS,WILLIE@GOOGLE
TRIPP,H_STREET:NZ,55,DOCTOR,TRIPP@YAHOO
.
.
.

Meanwhile my desired output is

NAME,ADDRESS:COUNTRY,AGE,JOB,EMAIL
BART,RF_STREET:USA,66,ENGINEER,BART@YAHOO
KYLE,78_STREET:AUS,,,KYLE@GOOGLE
WILLIE,6_STREET:AUS,,,WILLIE@GOOGLE
TRIPP,H_STREET:NZ,55,DOCTOR,TRIPP@YAHOO
. 
.
.

Is the file tab separated csv file? If that's the case you could just read with csv module without any modification. — thuyein, Jul 23 '20 at 03:27

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 23 '20 at 05:43

Here is one way to do it, splitting all the rows based on the width of the header columns:

import re

# ... open file
input_read = input_file.readlines()

colBreaks = [0] + [m.end() for m in re.finditer(r"\s{2,}", input_read[0])]

data = []
for line in input_read:
    data.append([line[i:j].strip() for i, j in zip(colBreaks, colBreaks[1:] + [None])])

print([','.join(result) for result in data])

Splitting by r"\s{2,}" means headers can have up to 1 space in them and this will still work properly.

Output:

['NAME,ADDRESS:COUNTRY,AGE,JOB,EMAIL', 
'BART,RF_STREET:USA,66,ENGINEER,BART@YAHOO', 
'KYLE,78_STREET:AUS,,,KYLE@GOOGLE', 
'WILLIE,6_STREET:AUS,,,WILLIE@GOOGLE', 
'TRIPP,H_STREET:NZ,55,DOCTOR,TRIPP@YAHOO']

Due credit to this answer and this answer for their helpful one-liners.

how can i replace spaces and detect the empty data in a line in txt file?

1 Answers1