Question

I have a txt file that looks something like this:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\n

data report

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\n

\n

\n

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\n

data report

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\n

\n

\n

…and so forth

I want to be able to extract each data report and do a variety of things to it (such as print a specific # that sits as a key value in some other dictionary I have, write it to another file, etc.). How would I go about doing this? I’ve been trying to learn Regex to help out, but it’s been confusing as I’m new to python, please help!

Answer 1

You can read the entire file into a string, split on the =-=-=… string, and strip the leading and trailing whitespace off of your reports like this:

s = open(filename).read()
reports = [x.strip() for x in s.split('=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\n')]