How can I add a space after every two characters in .txt file?

Question

The input I have is a large strain of characters in a .TXT file (over 18,000 characters) and I need to add a space after every two characters. How can I write the code to provide the output in a .TXT file again?
Like so;

Input:

123456789

Output:

 12 34 56 78 9

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 18 '20 at 15:42

2

The enumerate() function is going to be doing the heavy work for you here, all we need to do is iterate over the string of characters and use modulo to split ever two characters, a worked example is below!

string_of_chars = "123456789101213141516171819"
spaced_chars = ""

for i, c in enumerate(string_of_chars):
  if i % 2 == 1:
    spaced_chars += c + " "
  else:
    spaced_chars += c

print(spaced_chars)

answered Oct 18 '20 at 15:42

thisischuck

153
1
7

Thank you! This does seem like the appropriate tactic, however I'm not sure on how I can provide the input from a .txt file and enable output? – Elias Scott Holmes Oct 18 '20 at 15:46
Are you needing to save back to the file? – thisischuck Oct 18 '20 at 15:47
I require the spaced input so that I can encode it as per the format I need it in. If it's to the same file then that would be ideal? (I'm sorry, this is literally my first day learning python) – Elias Scott Holmes Oct 18 '20 at 15:49

mike.k · Answer 2 · 2020-10-18T15:54:17.577

This will produce 12 34 56 78 9

t = '123456789'
' '.join(t[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(t), 2))

If the file is very large, you won't want to read it all into memory, and instead read a block of characters, and write them to an output handle, and loop that.

To include read/write:

write_handle = open('./output.txt', 'w')

with open('./input.txt') as read_handle:
    for line in read_handle:
        write_handle.write(' '.join(line[i:i+2] for i in range(0, len(line), 2)))

write_handle.close()

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 18 '20 at 16:13

1

Try the following

txt = '123456789'
print(*[txt[x:x+2] for x in range(0, len(txt), 2)])

output

'12 34 56 78 9'

edited Oct 18 '20 at 16:13

Shijith

4,602
2
20
34

answered Oct 18 '20 at 15:49

Umutambyi Gad

4,082
3
18
39

My bad thanks a lot @Shijith I didn't realize that I'm missing quotes – Umutambyi Gad Oct 18 '20 at 16:15
Note that this relies on the `sep` argument of the `print` function but OP is not interested in printing, rather than writing to a file and `file.write(*[txt[x:x+2] for x in range(0, len(txt), 2)])` will not work... – Tomerikoo Oct 18 '20 at 16:16

How can I add a space after every two characters in .txt file?

3 Answers3