Steven D'Aprano <steve <at> REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> writes:
>
> On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:16:32 -0800, bsneddon wrote:
>
>
> > I am going to read a text file that is an export from a control system.
> > It has lines with information like
> >
> > base=1 name="first one" color=blue
> >
> > I would like to put this info into a dictionary for processing.
>
> Have you looked at the ConfigParser module?
>
> Assuming that ConfigParser isn't suitable, you can do this if each
> key=value pair is on its own line:
> [snip]
> If you have multiple keys per line, you need a more sophisticated way of
> splitting them. Something like this should work:
>
> d = {}
> for line in open(filename, 'r'):
> if not line.strip():
> continue
> terms = line.split('=')
> keys = terms[0::2] # every second item starting from the first
> values = terms[1::2] # every second item starting from the second
> for key, value in zip(keys, values):
> d[key.strip()] = value.strip()
>
There appears to be a problem with the above snippet, or you have a strange
interpretation of "put this info into a dictionary":
| >>> line = 'a=1 b=2 c=3 d=4'
| >>> d = {}
| >>> terms = line.split('=')
| >>> print terms
| ['a', '1 b', '2 c', '3 d', '4']
| >>> keys = terms[0::2] # every second item starting from the first
| >>> values = terms[1::2] # every second item starting from the second
| >>> for key, value in zip(keys, values):
| ... d[key.strip()] = value.strip()
| ...
| >>> print d
| {'a': '1 b', '2 c': '3 d'}
| >>>
Perhaps you meant
terms = re.split(r'[= ]', line)
which is an improvement, but this fails on cosmetic spaces e.g. a = 1 b = 2 ...
Try terms = filter(None, re.split(r'[= ]', line))
Now we get to the really hard part: handling the name="first one" in the OP's
example. The splitting approach has run out of steam.
The OP will need to divulge what is the protocol for escaping the " character if
it is present in the input. If nobody knows of a packaged solution to his
particular scheme, then he'll need to use something like pyparsing.
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
