Question

Im using a function to return a text file that is tab delimited and read in, the format of the text file is:

1_0 NP_250397 100.00 140 0 0 1 140 1 140 6e-54 198

1_0 NP_250378 60.00 140 0 0 1 140 1 140 6e-54 198

1_0 NP_257777 70.00 140 0 0 1 140 1 140 6e-54 198

My code used to return is:

def print_file(x):
    h = open('/home/me/data/db/test.blast', 'r')
    return h.readlines()

But when its printed it looks like:

[‘1_0\tNP_250397\t100.00\t140\t0\t0\t1\t140\t1\t140\t6e-54\t
198\n’,
‘1_0\tNP_250397\t100.00\t140\t0\t0\t1\t140\t1\t140\t6e-54\t
198\n’,
‘1_0\tNP_250397\t100.00\t140\t0\t0\t1\t140\t1\t140\t6e-54\t
198\n’]

Is there a way of returning the file, while aslo retaining formatting?

Answer 1

If you want print_file to actually print the file as the function name suggests

def print_file(x):
    with open('/home/me/data/db/test.blast', 'r') as h:
        for line in h:
            print line

If you want to return the contents of the file as a single string

def print_file(x):
    with open('/home/me/data/db/test.blast', 'r') as h:
        return h.read()

If your Python is too old to use the with statement

def print_file(x):
    return open('/home/me/data/db/test.blast', 'r').read()

Aside: You may be interested to know that the csv module can work with tab delimited files too