Question

if your input is john why isn’t the if statement kicking in????

studentname.txt

john 34
paul 37
poop 45

above is whats in studentname.txt

b=a
name = input('students name : ')
list1=[]

file=open('studentname.txt','r')
for (a) in file:
    list1.append(a)    
    b=a[:-3]    

why isn’t this next if statement tripping if name entered is ‘john’ for instance??

    if name == b:
        print(a)

file.close

Answer 1

You are picking up newlines. Depending on the os you created the file on, you’ll have different new line characters. The safest way to rid yourself of this is:

a = a.rstrip()

That will take care of any trailing whitespace.

You could also do:

for a in map(lambda x: x.rstrip(), file):

Also, don’t name your variable ‘file’. This is a python built-in function that you’ve now renamed for your script and any script that imports it.

Finally, you might prefer to handle files like this:

with open("studentname.txt", 'r') as testfile:
    for item in (line.rstrip() for line in testfile):
        print item

No need to close the file, the with statement controls it’s scope and closes it.