Question

Below is a simple search. It works, except for the fact that iterator is skipping the first line of the file. Inside iterator The first print statement has the correct word, but the second print statement (after the for loop) has the second line of text, not the first.

What about this for loops behavior am I missing?

"""Searches for the query inside a file
"""
def lines(the_file, query):
    lines = open(the_file)
    line(lines, query)

def line(lines, query):
    line = lines.readline()
    iterator(line, lines, word, query)

def word(line, query):
    word = line.strip()
    conditional(query, word)

def iterator(this, that, function, query):
    print this
    for this in that:
        print this
        function(this, query)

def conditional(this, that):
    if this in that:
        output(that, True)
    else:
        None

def output(query, result):
    print query

def search(the_file, query):
    lines(the_file, query)

search('c:/py/myfile.txt', 'a')

Answer 1

I think your problem is here:

def line(lines, query):
    line = lines.readline()
    iterator(line, lines, word, query)

This line: line = lines.readline() is reading one line off the file before you start your iteration. Then in your for loop you’re actually overwriting the this variable, it’s not pointing to your original line anymore.