Andrew McLean wrote:
> You are welcome. One point. I think there have been at least two
> different interpretations of precisely what you task is.
>
> I had assumed that all the different "header" lines contained data for
> the same fields in the same order, and similarly that all the "detail"
> lines contained data for the same fields in the same order.
Indeed, you are correct. Peter's version is interesting in its own
right, but not precisely what I had in mind. However, from his example
I saw what I was missing: I didn't realize that you could reassign the
DictReader field names on the fly. Here is a rudimentary example of my
working code and the data it can parse.
-------------------------------------
John|Smith
Beef|Potatos|Dinner Roll|Ice Cream
Susan|Jones
Chicken|Peas|Biscuits|Cake
Roger|Miller
Pork|Salad|Muffin|Cookies
-------------------------------------
import csv
HeaderFields = ["First Name", "Last Name"]
DetailFields = ["Entree", "Side Dish", "Starch", "Desert"]
reader = csv.DictReader(open("testdata.txt"), [], delimiter="|")
while True:
try:
# Read next "header" line (if there isn't one then exit the
loop)
reader.fieldnames = HeaderFields
header = reader.next()
# Read the next "detail" line
reader.fieldnames = DetailFields
detail = reader.next()
# Print the parsed data
print '-' * 40
print "Header (%d fields): %s" % (len(header), header)
print "Detail (%d fields): %s" % (len(detail), detail)
except StopIteration: break
Regards,
-Stephan
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