Question

I am trying to search this text document with a regular expression but I also need a users input in the regular expression, I am unsure how to do this and am quite new to python programming and any assistance will be greatly appreciated !

import re

str1=raw_input("Room Number(L1 - L5): ")
text=open('roombookings.txt', 'r')

while 1:
    line = text.readline()
    if line:
        re.search(?????)
    else:
        break

text.close()

Answer 1

1. To iterate over the lines in a file, do

   for line in text:
   

   You don’t need any of that while 1 stuff.

2. To “splice” the contents of a variable into a string, do

   "Your name is {name}.".format(name="John")
   

   See the docs.

3. To open and close files, do:

   with open(...) as f:
   

   instead of manually writing f.close() — this handles exceptions as well. Note also that if you don’t explicitly close the file it will be closed when the object is deleted, which happens when there are no more references to it.