Loop Through String in .txt File and Insert Line Breaks If Character = 'X'

Question

Problem: I have a .txt file with string that looks like this:

Q. Going back to July who all lived with you? 9 A. Ten people. 10 Q. Okay. So for the year, you had ten people living with you? 13 A. Yes.
Q. Going back to July who all lived with you? 9 A. Ten people. 10 Q. Okay. So for the year, you had ten people living with you? 13 A. Yes.
Q. Going back to July who all lived with you? 9 A. Ten people. 10 Q. Okay. So for the year, you had ten people living with you? 13 A. Yes.

What I would like to do: I would like to loop through the entire .txt file and add a '\n' in front of each 'Q.' and 'A.' so that when I reopen the .txt file, each Q. and A. string is on a separate line.

This would be just a few keystrokes in any text editor. You don't need a program for this. — Tim Roberts, Feb 04 '22 at 21:35

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '22 at 21:40

1

You can use .replace() to replace each "Q." with "\nQ." (and similar for "A.").

with open("in.txt") as in_file, open("out.txt", "w") as out_file:
    for line in in_file:
        out_file.write(line.replace("A.", "\nA.").replace("Q.", "\nQ."))

answered Feb 04 '22 at 21:40

BrokenBenchmark

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why not use `in_file.read()' instead of going over all lines? – Ahmed Elashry Feb 04 '22 at 21:48
Thank you so much!!! – Adam Feb 04 '22 at 21:48
1

@AhmedElashry Because if the file is large, you wouldn't want to read it in all at once using `.read()`. – BrokenBenchmark Feb 04 '22 at 22:01
Won't this not work if you want to edit the file in place, as in, in.txt and out.txt are the same file? – Eliezer Miron Mar 27 '22 at 15:31
You can rename the file after you're done, or you can load the entire file into memory and then write back out all at once. If the file is large, however, this may not be feasible. See [here](https://stackoverflow.com/a/5453315/17769815) for a further discussion on this. – BrokenBenchmark Mar 27 '22 at 16:50

Loop Through String in .txt File and Insert Line Breaks If Character = 'X'

1 Answers1