Question

Here is the code I have for reading a text file a storing it as a dictionary:

from sys import argv

def data(file):
    d = {}
    for line in file:
        if line.strip() != '':
            key,value = line.split(":")
            if key == 'RootObject':
                continue
            if key == 'Object':
                obj = value.strip()
                d[obj]={}
            else:
                d[obj][key] = value.strip()
    return d

file = open(argv[1])
planets = data(file)
print(planets)

My question is did I implement the argv correctly so that any user can run the dictionary by just typing solardictionary.py random.txt in the commandline and run it. I tried running this but I keep getting an index error and I’m not sure there might be something wrong with my argv implementation.

Answer 1

You need to type file = open(sys.argv[1],'r') in order to access the array because it is contained within the sys module.

http://docs.python.org/3.1/library/sys.html#module-sys

You may also be interested in opening the file within a try-catch block.